Sometimes I wonder how useful a language-to-language dictionary can possibly be, if it tries only to find the closest substitute word. That is to say, the target word may have many senses to it, but only one of them applies. The reader may then be perplexed, not knowing which of the senses was intended, or worse, make the assumption that all of the senses of the target word apply.
I saw どの道 for the first time the other day, and looked it up in the dictionary: "anyway". But wait, I already knew a word for that !!! とにかく.
Let's compare:
とにかく - Anyway. Used as a segue, a means to return to the main conversation from a digression, or to change the subject altogether.
どの道 - Although the dictionary said "anyway", it's really more like "in any case", "no matter how you look at it", or "whichever choice you make" (implying that the result does not differ significantly).
No comments:
Post a Comment