Tuesday, February 19, 2008

半端ない

"That's just unbelievable". How many times did you wanted to say something like that in Japanese but couldn't think of a better phrase. There's a neat phrase that sums up that feeling. And it's 半端じゃない (はんぱじゃない) or just 半端ない(はんぱない).

So for example, when you see the Big Mac hamburger tower on the left, your first impulse might be to say, "Oh, my god, that's an unbelievably tall hamburger." In Japanese, you would say 「おっと!それは半端ないです」.

半端ない is usually used as an adjective. Stressing the absolute totality of word following it. An example would be 「彼は半端ないお金持っているね」, which roughly translates to, "He's has money beyond your wildest dreams". Put simply, 半端ない is 10,0000,0000 times more potent than the adjective "too".

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