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This is dialogue (it's from a magazine).

A: 現実場面では気★いが山のように出て事件も死ぬほど起こしてて、タブー云々と言ってるうちに表現が現実に負けちゃってるじゃん、最近って。

B: 俺も別に[奇]{き}をてらってタブー演るわけじゃなくて.

I absolutely don't understand the first part of the first sentence. What does 気★い mean? What does 事件も死ぬほど起こす mean? Although I know タブー and 演る separately, I can't get the meaning of タブー演る. And I'm not sure about the meaning of 奇をてらう.

Can somebody help me?

senshin
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neroli
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    That's [気違]{きちが}い... It's a derogatory term so it's censored...　を is omitted between タブー and [演]{や}る –  Dec 11 '12 at 16:36
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    I would say that the use of 死ぬほど here is a bit slangy, and means "frequently". The more standard meaning of the phrase is "desperately". Again, it would help a lot to have more context. – dainichi Dec 12 '12 at 00:18
  • Thanks for you comments!

    Then the first sentence's meaning is something like: "Last time many freaks appears and they are saying a prohibited things with desperate attempts to look eccentric. And because of it expressiveness of prohibited words loses", isn't it?

    Excuse me for my poor English ^^'

     – neroli Dec 12 '12 at 08:23
  • @Chocolate: What is 気違い considered derogatory? – istrasci Dec 12 '12 at 15:38
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    This post is essentially four questions cramped together, and I am afraid that it is not suitable for the format of this website, where questions should be useful to future visitors. It may be better to pick the most important point that you do not understand and focus the post on it. Later you can post more questions as separate posts. (In theory, you can post four separate posts simultaneously, but that would not be good because it would look like take-and-take instead of give-and-take.) – Tsuyoshi Ito Dec 12 '12 at 19:09
  • @istrasci ここです:「差別用語とされる」 http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%81%8D%E3%81%A1%E3%81%8C%E3%81%84 –  Dec 12 '12 at 20:55
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    @istrasci, from kanjidamage: 気違い きちがい fuckin' crazy
    気 (mood) + 違 (different and therefore wrong) = 気違い (fuckin' crazy)

    (literally, 'different feeling') crazy - this is one of the biggest cusses in the whole language-a garunteed fight-starter. This is instructive in several ways.

    1. Japanese is such a polite language that 'different feeling' is one of the worst insults.

    2. it takes a certain kind of culture to think that having a different feeling is such a bad thing in the first place!

    3. Historically it is a discriminatory term against people who suffer from mental illness.

     – yadokari Dec 18 '12 at 19:56
  • @yadokari: I know what it means, but I thought it was more of an objective description, like "mentally insane". I never knew it was derogatory. – istrasci Dec 18 '12 at 20:37
  • We also have some discussion of such words on JLU: http://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/2080/are-there-words-so-bad-that-they-arent-allowed-on-television/3182 –  Jan 10 '13 at 07:46

1 Answers1

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現実場面では気★いが山のように出て事件も死ぬほど起こしてて

"In real world, there are a lot of crazy people, also committing far too many crimes". As has been pointed out, "気★い" is "気違い" with a letter masked, which is analogous to writing "f*cking" instead of "fucking". This sentence sounds like it's taken from a transcript of an interview, and this particular word violates the publishing/broadcasting industry's common guideline for discriminatory words. (This is where you'd picture the editor and the interviewee going back and forth. See the meaning of the next sentence and it'll be clear.)

"死ぬほど" is a word that exaggerates the issue at hand. Its literal meaning would be something like "(so much so that) it'll kill", but it's like how Samuel Jackson uses "fucking" in Pulp Fiction; it can be used for almost anything, but it won't make you sound intelligent.

タブー云々と言ってるうちに表現が現実に負けちゃってるじゃん、最近って

"We make big deal out of this guideline [in our industry], but nowadays those are behind the reality". The speaker is saying he thinks those industry internal guidelines are a joke, when you see far worse (mentally picture mass murderers and psychopaths) in the real world.

You can tell that the speaker is a performer of some sort (probably a comedian), someone in the industry. He isn't articularing it very well, but the reader does feel his sense of vague dissatisfaction with rules under which he has to operate.

"タブー" is the literal translation of the word taboo, but in this context it refers to the aforementioned guideline. "Taboo" is actually quite an apt choice here because they not only use these words deemed discrimanatory, but they also do not talk about the existence of the guideline itself. (Remember the first rule of the Fight Club, everyone?)

俺も別に奇をてらってタブー演るわけじゃなくて

"It's not like I perform [acts] that goes against those guidelines just to garner attention." "奇をてらって" is "do something strange or eccentric" or "try a new thing". "タブー演る" is "タブーを演る" with a particle dropped. It refers to his performing some kind of acts that actively use the words that violate the guidelines.

BTW I don't think it's normal to write "演る" and have it read "やる". You either write it like やる (verb:do), or 演じる (verb:play) and read えんじる.

Kohsuke Kawaguchi
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