We’re going to take a deep dive into the word shigoto<\/i> in Japanese. I’ll cover the meaning, break down each of its component parts into their most essential forms, and then introduce ways to use and recognize the word.<\/p>\n
And along the way we’ll learn a bunch about words for work in Japanese, as well as the unique ways words are written and pronounced with kanji<\/i>. Let’s get started with a simple, straightforward definition of shigoto<\/i>. Shigoto<\/i> is written in Japanese as 仕事 or しごと and means “work.” Often it is used to mean “work” in the sense of one’s job, but it can also refer to chores, a trade, someone’s handiwork, and is even used the same way “work” is in physics terminology.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Let’s dip into the nice and simple Sanseido dictionary for our first look at the deeper sense of the word shigoto<\/i>.<\/p>\n （１） するべきこと<\/strong>． Fear not, gentle reader—I’ll take you through these step by step. That first one says suru-beki-koto<\/i>, or do-must do-thing. It’s a “thing you gotta do.” In effect, your work, your job.<\/p>\n Next up is that spiky-looking 職業<\/strong>, made up of the kanji<\/i> for “employment” and “business,” respectively. This one—shoku-gyou<\/i>—says, simply, “occupation.” Easy, right?<\/p>\n Lastly, we get a nice, big sentence. I’ll break it down as literally as I can without making it difficult to understand. “In mechanics, when, due to an external force, an object is moved.”<\/p>\n So, to give you a sense of the way the word is used, you could basically say, “Oh no! I’m late for my shigoto<\/i>!”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If we dig into a few other dictionaries, we discover that shigoto<\/i> carries a few other interesting qualities. First off, it’s what’s known as a “suru-verb.”<\/strong><\/p>\n Suru-verbs are made by taking a noun and attaching the verb suru<\/i><\/strong>, which means (roughly) “to do,” at the end. Suru-verbs are often, though not exclusively, made from words of Chinese origin, and generally make things sound more formal.<\/p>\n Many verb concepts in Japanese have at least two forms—a <\/strong>suru-verb form, and a regular verb form<\/strong>.<\/p>\n This somewhat mirrors a feature of the English language. Many concepts in English have both a Germanic-origin<\/strong> word<\/strong> and a French-origin word<\/strong> associated with them, and typically these will be divided by how formal they are to use.<\/p>\n It’s the difference between “drink” (Germanic) and “beverage” (French), or “thinking” (Germanic) and “pensive” (French).<\/p>\n A little further down this article, I’ll show you some “regular” verbs that mirror the meaning of shigoto<\/i> and how they can be used a little differently.<\/p>\n So, from shigoto<\/i>, we get shigoto<\/i>-suru, “to work.”<\/p>\n Shigoto<\/i> also functions as what is often termed a “no-adjective” in English<\/strong>. As far as I can tell, this has no direct translation in Japanese, but what it essentially means is that the word shigoto<\/i> can be used to modify other words by attaching the particle no<\/i> to the end.<\/p>\n Particles<\/strong> are an interesting feature of Japanese. They’re typically one or two syllables long, carry no meaning on their own and they can’t be inflected in any way.<\/p>\n To use them you attach them to word or clause to impart grammatical information<\/strong>, such as noting the topic of a sentence<\/strong>, the direct object<\/strong>, or the direction of movement<\/strong>. In this case, no<\/i> is being used to apply the idea of the word shigoto<\/i> to another word.<\/p>\n For example, we can modify the noun henka<\/i>, meaning “change,” to create the idea of “change of job” by saying shigoto-no-henka<\/i>. We can modify the word for “story,” hanashi<\/i>, to talk about a “work story,” or shigoto-no-hanashi<\/i>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Alright, strap in. We’re going deeper. I’m going to break the word down into its Chinese characters<\/strong>, and then break those down as well. I’ll take you through the weirdness of their pronunciation and explain why<\/i> it’s a bit strange.<\/p>\n And I’ll even do my best to go through the very origins of the word itself.<\/p>\n Shigoto<\/i> is made up of two kanji<\/i><\/strong>, or Chinese characters. These are 仕<\/strong> and 事<\/strong>.<\/p>\n That first kanji<\/i> is where we get the shi<\/i>from and the second one gives us koto<\/i>. “Koto!? But I thought it was Goto!” you exclaim furiously. Relax, I gotcha. This is where we encounter our first bit of weirdness with this word. Let me introduce you to rendaku<\/i><\/strong>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Step One: A Detour Through Rendaku<\/i><\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n The rules surrounding rendaku<\/i> can get crazy complicated<\/strong>, and there’s a wiki article on it if you’re feeling like an intellectual self-flagellation.<\/p>\n But the short of it is that when, in Japanese, two words are joined into a compound, very often the consonant that begins the second word will become a “voiced” consonant.<\/p>\n What the difference between voiced and unvoiced<\/strong>? Well, let’s take the two Japanese hiragana<\/i> (these are sorta like letters) く and ぐ, or KU and GU, respectively.<\/p>\n Notice that they both look almost identical, except for the two dashes — known as dakuten <\/i><\/strong>— on the second one. Most hiragana<\/i> work this way. You have the base character, which is unvoiced, and then add dakuten<\/i> to make it voiced.<\/p>\n So, try to say KU and notice what happens when you pronounce the K. It’s just a sort of tightening of the back of your tongue and a press of air. Your vocal cords don’t do anything.<\/p>\n Now say GU. What happens when you pronounce the G? Your throat vibrates with sound. You use your voice box. It’s voiced<\/i>. That’s the difference.<\/p>\n So, rendaku<\/i> is when the consonant shifts from unvoiced to voiced following a vowel<\/strong>. Like I said, there’re a lot of little rules that govern this, but it’s complicated, and not necessary to get into unless you’re specifically interested in Japanese phonology.<\/p>\n For our purposes, it’s enough to note the interesting fact that shigoto<\/i> goes through this subtle transformation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Step Two: The Crossfire of On and Kun<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n In Japanese, kanji<\/i> almost always have multiple ways of being said.<\/strong><\/p>\n Each kanji<\/i> carries with it an onyomi<\/i> reading<\/strong> and a kunyomi<\/i> reading<\/strong>, and often multiples of each. A character like 事 can be pronounced koto, tsuka, ji<\/i>, or zu<\/i>.<\/p>\n “Hold up,” I hear you say. “That’s nuts. I mean, sure, English has some annoying homophones, but you’re telling me every<\/i> kanji<\/i> is basically a crapshoot of pronunciation?!” Hold your horses there.<\/p>\n It’s weird and a little challenging, but it’s not a total<\/i> crapshoot—except when it is. Let’s take a look at why this is and how it affects the reading of shigoto<\/i>.<\/p>\n Roughly fifteen-hundred years<\/strong> ago the Japanese had a spoken language, but no writing system<\/strong>. Then they took China’s writing system from them wholesale and worked a little voodoo on it to adapt it for their day-to-day use.<\/p>\n Each character was given a reading based on how it sounded in Chinese. For example, the onyomi<\/i> pronunciation of the kanji<\/i> for “water,” 水<\/strong>, is sui<\/i>, while the Chinese pronunciation is shuǐ<\/i>.<\/p>\n “But what about the multiple readings<\/strong>?!” I’m getting to it, I’m getting to it! See, China is huge, and the language changes from place to place. One region might pronounce a character one way, and another a different way—and the Japanese just said, “Screw it, let’s take ‘em all.”<\/p>\n “The kunyomi<\/i>! The kunyomi<\/i>!” Well, before they had kanji<\/i>, they still had their own way of saying things. So, they just attached the Japanese word to the Chinese character. So, for a character like 水, the kunyomi<\/i> reading would be mizu<\/i>.<\/p>\n Now, there’s a few simple rules that are pretty reliable for telling you when to use either the onyomi<\/i> or the kunyomi <\/i><\/strong>(though none I know of to tell you which onyomi<\/i> or kunyomi<\/i> to use once you’ve got the first part figured out!).<\/p>\n For this article, I’m only going to point out one rule that’s usually pretty reliable<\/strong>.<\/p>\n When you have a compound kanji<\/i> word (i.e. two or more kanji<\/i> stuck together) and no hiragana<\/i> stuck to the end, then both characters will use the onyomi<\/i>. It just makes sense that way—that’s how Chinese is written, and those sorts of compounds are taken from Chinese.<\/p>\n But shigoto doesn’t follow the rules. Shigoto is written with both on and <\/strong>kun readings<\/strong>. Shi is the onyomi reading of and koto is the kunyomi reading of 事. You just have to know by heart<\/strong> how to read this one. No hints.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Step Three: But What Do the Kanji<\/i> for Shigoto<\/i> Actually Mean?<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n 仕<\/strong> is made up of two component parts known as “radicals.” To the left is a man and to the right is a samurai. So, it shows a man serving a samurai. This illustrates the idea of “attending upon” or “serving.” It inherits that shi <\/i>pronunciation from the radical on the right.<\/p>\n 事<\/strong> is a bit trickier in divining its origins. It’s also a bit nebulous in its definition. 事<\/strong> encompasses the ideas of “thing,” but mostly in a non-material sense. It’s the “matter” in “what’s the matter?” It’s the “business” in “I’ve got business to attend to.”<\/p>\n So, together, these make up the idea of “a matter to attend upon.” Y’know: work.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Secret Step Four: The Etymology of Shigoto<\/i><\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n I had to dive into a Japanese etymology dictionary<\/strong> for this one, so I’m coming back with some roughly translated info. Use caution with this trivia nugget before trying to school your Japanese sensei<\/i> on the meaning of shigoto<\/i>.<\/p>\n Basically, shigoto<\/i> originally meant just “doing.”<\/strong> It later came to carry the sense of actual “work” and “labor.” There has been suggestion that the 仕 in shigoto<\/i> was merely ateji<\/i>—or a character used only for its sound and not its meaning (or vice versa).<\/p>\n However, it’s suggested that during the Edo period there was some linguistic cross-pollination between two common words: 仕る<\/strong>, “to serve,” and 為事<\/strong>, which was the written form of shigoto<\/i> at the time, via the word 為る<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Basically, 仕る<\/strong> plus 為る<\/strong>, divided by 為事<\/strong> equals 仕事<\/strong>. Or something like that. My specialty was not in translating etymology dictionaries that discuss arcane and archaic forms of words.<\/p>\n Either way, this potential cross-pollination muddies the evidence regarding the ateji<\/i> nature of 仕<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Okay, this last section was pretty nerdy, and a bit speculative, but I hope somewhat interesting! Let’s take a look at some more ways we can talk about work as well as a few more ways to use shigoto<\/i>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A quick scan of an online Japanese-to-English dictionary shows at least 72 different compound words using shigoto<\/i><\/strong>. These should help you wrap you head around how the word is thought of and used in Japanese by examining some of its derivative forms.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 仕事場<\/strong> – shigoto-ba<\/i> = place of work<\/p>\n 仕事中<\/strong> – shigoto-chuu<\/i> = in the midst of working<\/p>\n 手仕事<\/strong> – te-shigoto<\/i> = manual labor<\/p>\n 仕事量<\/strong> – shigoto-ryou<\/i>= one’s workload<\/p>\n 仕事探し<\/strong> – shigoto-sagashi <\/i>= job hunting<\/p>\n 針仕事<\/strong> – hari-shigoto<\/i> = needlework or sewing<\/p>\n 庭仕事<\/strong> – niwa-shigoto<\/i> = gardening<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The list goes on and on, but these are a few useful ones to get your started on learning more about the essential meaning of shigoto<\/i>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So, what are some other ways to discuss work? You can say that you hataraku<\/i><\/strong>, which means to work or labor.<\/p>\n You could be more specific and say that you ～tsutomeru<\/i><\/strong>, which means that you “work for ～<\/strong>” or “are employed at ～<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n If you want to be more general, you could say that younasegeru<\/i><\/strong>, or “earn money<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n Perhaps you need a more servile term, like tsukaeru<\/i><\/strong>, which suggests “serving someone<\/strong>” or “attending up someone<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n Or maybe you want to drive home your efforts with a word like rousuru<\/i><\/strong>, which means more explicitly “to labor.<\/strong>”<\/p>\n If you just want to mention your job itself, you could pull out that word from earlier: shokugyou<\/i><\/strong>, which means “occupation, profession, career.<\/strong>”<\/p>\n You could also refer to your part-time job with the word arubaito<\/i><\/strong>, often shortened to baito<\/i><\/strong>, which comes from the German word for job, “Arbeit.<\/strong>”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Time to put what you’ve learned into practice—time to do a little shigoto<\/i>!<\/p>\n Try to think about how you could apply the word to tasks around you<\/strong> and how you might choose to use shigoto<\/i> or another one of the words we introduced.<\/p>\n And when you come across more Japanese, think about what we went over today with regards to all the neat trivia on ateji<\/i>, onyomi<\/i>, kunyomi<\/i>, rendaku<\/i><\/strong>, and more.<\/p>\n This was a whopper of an article, covering tons of the background of Japanese grammar, and all for one tiny word! At least now you’ll never forget the meaning of shigoto<\/i>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s time to work on your Japanese!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":226,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"disable-in-feed":false,"article-schema-type":"Article","disable-critical-css":false,"_convertkit_action_broadcast_export":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-japanese"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13587,"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions\/13587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n[toc]\n <\/p>\nWhat does Shigoto mean?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Taking a Look at the Exact Meaning of Shigoto<\/i><\/b><\/h2>\n
\n（２） 職業<\/strong>．
\n（３） 力学で，外力により物体が移動すること<\/strong>．<\/p>\nMore Work for Shigoto<\/i><\/b><\/h2>\n
What do the Shigoto Kanji<\/i> Mean?<\/b><\/h2>\n
The Many Uses of Shigoto<\/i><\/b><\/h2>\n
The Words of Work: Beyond Shigoto<\/i><\/b><\/h2>\n
Get to Shigoto<\/i>!<\/b><\/h2>\n