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10 Comments

December 9, 2007

寝違え A Crick in the Neck

It’s nice to see a few new faces in the ole MyBlogLog thingy. Welcome!
This morning Yumi awoke and couldn’t move her neck. Recently she has been saying のどがいた~い! nodo ga ita~i! which means ‘my throat hurts, darnit!’ (ok, I added the ‘darnit’) We’ve been sharing colds.

But this morning she said 首がいた~い! kubi ga ita~i which means ‘my neck hurts, darnit!’
At first, I thought she made a mistake. After all, every morning for a week she has greeted me with a のどがいた~い! even before an おはようございます! But it turns out she had (has) a crick in her neck.
さて、how does one say ‘crick in the neck’ in Japanese? I know you must get this all the time.

寝違えne chigae

When you sleep 「寝」 in a bad 「違え」 position, you get a crick in your neck.
As the dutiful husband that I am, I Googled ‘crick in the neck’ to find how to ease the pain. I found several sensible advice articles saying to apply heat and massage it out. Yumi grabbed the computer and did a Google search for 「寝違え なおす」. The Japanese consensus was to NOT apply heat as that would only make it worse but to apply cold and definitely not massage.

Oh well.

Japanese Vocabulary Image
のど nodo throat
ga subject particle (used in a sentence to show what’s the subject)
いた~い ita~i hurt (the ~ is just used to mimic her expression)
kubi neck
おはようございます! ohayou gozaimasu! Good morning!
ne sleep
違え chigae different, wrong
なおす naosu fix, heal

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  • Thanks again Clay! I really appreciate that you took the time to post those examples while being so busy with the server move!
    BTW, that Kenkyusha dictionary sounds great 🙂

  • Thanks!
    Darsel:
    寝違える is the verb form (to get a crick in your neck during sleep)
    ー違える is used in a number ways
    The Kenkyusha J-E (on the Casio XD-GW9600) give the following examples:
    ボタンをかけ違える button (one’s shirt) up wrong
    バスを乗り違える get on the wrong bus
    薬を飲み違える take the wrong medicine (use ‘drink’ in Japanese)
    集合時刻を覚え違えていた I had mistaken the time we were supposed to meet.

  • It can be helpful taking words apart, but ultimately you should learn nechigae as a word itself. 違う is a very versitile word. It can mean a number of things depending on the context.

  • New Vocabulary! Yay, thanks! 🙂
    One question though… why is 違え used like that?
    My first guess would be to use it as 違う (being wrong) or 違い (mistake?).
    I hope I’m not asking something too obvious… if so, please pardon my ignorance ^^’

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