The Japanese language - being completely different to our European, Latin based languages and thus not resembling English in the slightest - is fraught with surprises and pitfalls to screw over the unwary foreigner. For example, if you at the suffix -so to the end of an adjective in Japanese, it means "it appears" or "it looks" whatever. Oishii = delicious; oishii-so = it looks delicious. Muzukashii = difficult; muzukashi-so = it looks difficult etc. Now, due to its ubiquity, "kawaii" is one of the first words you learn in Japanese. It basically translates as"cute" and if you go one day without hearing it said about something.....well, I don't know, because that's never happened to me.
Based on these two premises, you can construct the phrase "kawaii-so" = it looks cute. Seems obvious right? And indeed I've said that many times over the last few months since I've been getting to grips with Japanese, including to students when they got new clothes or dyed their hair. And now - AND NOW - I find out that kawaiso is in fact a word completely in itself and means pitiful. SO I'VE BEEN TELLING PEOPLE THEIR NEW HAIRCUTS LOOK PITIFUL!! And no-one though to point this out to me?! Gah!!
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I've been asking my students "was that difficult, or am I kind?" (yasashii) instead of easy (kantan), even though yasashii is supposed to mean easy, but nobody can tell me the difference....
It'd be much easier if they'd just speak bloody English.
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