3 ms·

> but no mention of the fable when I learned it in Japanese I personally learned of it from the Japanese game "Ace Attorney". There's a spear/shield ornament

> but no mention of the fable when I learned it in Japanese I personally learned of it from the Japanese game "Ace Attorney". There's a spear/shield ornament somewhere as evidence, so the game spends a decent amount of time introducing the myth to the audience. The myth is seen again in Trigun (impenetrable shield was one of the enemies that Vash took down), and again in "Rising of the Shield Hero" where Shield-guy's biggest rival is the Spear-guy. A lot of Japanese media talk about this spear-vs-shield story. If it was a myth borrowed from China, that still makes sense. (Aesop is Greek after all, but still influenced English). -------- My overall point is that some words reference stories rather than the actual meaning of the word. Learning the underlying stories can help when learning those languages.

cthalupa 5y ago
To me, it's interesting in the "Huh, neat" kind of way in the same way knowing the etymology of "sour grapes" is. At least personally, I don't find it particularly useful for actually learning the language - there's just too many words like this for it to provide me any real advantage, and I'd likely end up confusing myself more when running into the words where there isn't any similar significance. For example, irresponsible/sloppy is 'いい加減', and 加 means increase while 減 means decrease - I could see myself going 'hmm I know the word contradiction is one where the two kanji actually contradict each other... increase and decrease contradict each other, I bet this is it!"