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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikata_ga_nai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikata_ga_nai
by A_COMPUTER 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikata_ga_nai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikata_ga_nai
- gcv 11y agoEnglish has an equivalent: "it is what it is". It also stops solution-seeking dead in its tracks. A hateful little phrase.
- protomyth 11y agoThat's educational. Had a boss who normally on an even keel then someone said "it is what it is" to him and he got very, very angry. It was like someone kicked him. He said that was just unacceptable and we would find a solution / work around. I guess I now know the other half of the story.
- impendia 11y agoI lived in Japan for two years, and studied the language, and it was amazing how that sentence always brought any discussion to a conclusion. Grammatically, its negation would be "Shikata ga aru", but I never heard this said once.
- sliverstorm 11y agoSounds like it's a thought-terminating cliche- of which we have many in English.
- kazinator 11y agoMaybe that negation would be too obviously related to the idiom. There are other ways to say there is a way; e.g. instead of shikata, there is houhou： 方法 （方法がある）. The counter-idiom, if you will, to "nothing can be done" might be "where there is a will, there is a way": 意志のあるところには方法がある。 If someone says しょうがない or しかたがない, and you don't agree, that might be the thing.
- sdrothrock 11y ago> The counter-idiom, if you will, to "nothing can be done" might be "where there is a will, there is a way": I've always thought of the counter-idiom as being やればできる (yareba dekiru) -- "you can do it if you try."
- mjklin 11y agoAh, this must be the Japanese equivalent of the Chinese "mei banfa" (没办法), probably the national slogan. Oh, they are building a dam and you need to move your house twenty metres up the hill? "Mei banfa".
- navbaker 11y agoWow, I knew this phrase from the Metasploit encoder, but never knew that it had such deep cultural meaning!