Learn Japanese Today

When writing my review of Furigana yesterday, I realized I always perform the same test as soon as I get a new dictionary, and I though I’d share it with you.

I call it “The Public Test.” It originated from my end of term paper this past spring, when I was writing about Japanese bathing customs. I wrote a lot about 銭湯 (sentou), Japanese public baths, and I had a terrible time figuring out all the correct contexts for the myriad ways to say public in Japanese. I was using a few crappy dictionaries, online and in print, because I couldn’t find my good one, and it was a real pain. Of course, the dictionary I normally use gave me pretty straight answers once I finally found it, so I decided it was a good test to figure out if a dictionary is worth its salt.

Essentially, a good dictionary should correctly distinguish most, if not all of the following words and give you a decent idea of when to use them:

公衆 (koushuu), 大衆 (taishuu): The general public. As in, “The general public still don’t know about the scandal”

公の(ooyake no),公共の(koukyou no):  Common, communal, non-private. These all mean basically the same thing to my knowledge, if you know any furthur intricacies, leave a comment.

公衆の(koushuu no): For public use. A public telephone is a 公衆電話 (koushuu denwa)

公開 (koukai): Open to the public. For example, a government building might be koukai on Thursdays.

公然 (kouzen): Open (as opposed to secret), public knowledge. Add と to mean, “in public”. Urinating in public would be 公然と放尿 (kouzen to hounyou)

公立 (kouritsu): Government-established, generally used for institutions like public libraries (kouritsu toshokan) and public schools (kouritsu gakkou).

人前で (hito mae de): In front of people. The way we generally use public in the term public speaking.

As you can see, these words are all very different, stemming from the same original English word, “public.” A good dictionary should be aware that it’s not always a one-for-one exchange between languages. Try giving this test to a dictionary yourself. It doesn’t clear up all problems, but it does clear up most.

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