Japanese with anime voice: episode18
Hello, I’m Sachi.
I was talking to my mom the other day and realized that when someone holds a cold dish in their hand and asks, “Do you want to chin this?”, do you all know what that means? You may wonder what “chin” means when you hear it for the first time, but “chin” means to heat up in a microwave oven.
“Shall I chin?” means, “Shall I heat it up in the microwave? ” In this case, “chin” means “to heat up in a microwave oven. ” Strictly speaking, the word “chin” does not have such a meaning. To put it more simply, if we were to use another word to describe microwaving, it would be “chin”.
Then why do we use the word “chin”? It is because the sound of an old microwave oven when it was finished heating up was “chin”.
I think this is a common language for almost all Japanese. For example, when a dish is cold, if you say to your host family, “Please chin this,” they will know what to do with it.
However, this is only used to heat up food in a microwave oven. When you heat miso soup in a pot on the stove, it is not called “chin”. We say “warm up the miso soup”.
If you ask someone to chin miso soup in an お椀 (owan), they will say that お椀 (owan) cannot be chin in a microwave. Yes, Owan is not porcelain, so you cannot use it in the microwave.
This is just a two-character “chin,” but it is really a very useful word. You don’t have to go to the trouble of saying, “Warm up this dish in the microwave,” or “Shall I warm up this dish in the microwave?” you can just say, “Please chin it,” or “Shall I chin?”. Furthermore, just by saying the two words “chin” and “chin?,” and by raising or lowering the end of the word, you can have a conversation about whether or not you want to microwave the food.
Also, there is a catch phrase “レンジでチン (renji de chin)” for foods that can be quickly eaten in a microwave oven. Just by writing “レンジでチン (renji de chin)” on a food, you can tell that it is a food that can be eaten immediately after being heated in a microwave oven.
Although, today, a microwave oven is not a sound called CHIN. I think it’s often “beep-beep”. Ours also say “beep”. However, I have never heard “Shall I beep-beep?” so far. I think that even if I say “Shall I beep-beep?” people will probably just ask me “what?”. I don’t think kids in their twenties or younger today have ever heard of a microwave oven that makes a “chin” sound. When I think about it, by the time I become a grandmother and die, the word “chin” will probably have changed.
Japanese sometimes uses onomatopoeic words as if they were verbs or nouns. Onomatopoeia refers to the sounds of things and animals. For example, the sound of a bonfire is called pachipachi, a sparrow makes a chunchun sound, a dog makes a wanwan sound, a cicada makes a minmin sound, and so on. When we say, “The dog is barking and noisy,” we also say, “The dog is wanwan noisy.
Similar to “chin,” the sound of インターフォン (inta-phone) is often expressed with the word “pinpon”. The button you press from the front of the house to let people inside know you are coming is called インターフォン (inta-phone), and the word “pinpon” means “to press the インターフォン (inta-phone)”. When the chime rings at home, we say “pinpon rang,” and it is easier to say “pinpon” than “インターフォン (inta-phone) rang”. You would think that it would be better to use the chime then. Of course, we sometimes use “chime. However, chimes include other sounds as well. Like the ding-dong, ding-dong sound of a school or office. The word “pinpon” includes the meaning of “visitor,” so using “pinpon” is easier to understand than “intercom. As I mentioned earlier, the word “pinpon” doesn’t exactly mean “visitor” in the same way as “chin”.
So how do we even know the other meanings contained in the word? I can’t explain it in words. In fact, I think the more you put it in writing, the more difficult it becomes to understand the meaning. If you want to know and feel the meaning, I think the fastest way is to come to Japan and live with Japanese people to learn the meaning of onomatopoeic words such as “chin” and “pinpon”. If you have the courage, buy a boxed lunch at a convenience store and before the clerk asks you “Shall I warm it up?”, challenge yourself and ask for a “Could you please chin?” first! If you are able to do so, please tell me the expression on the clerk’s face when you do so!
