初めは断ったんです。

Sentence Discussions Japanese
#1
English Translation

I refused at first.

初め, 始め, and はじめ are all equally valid options? And then there’s 最初…

#2

@Terence
初め and 始め are NOT interchangeable.

  • If you say 始め, there is always 終わり (ending). It’s like a long string of time and the one edge is 始め and the other is 終わり.
  • On the other hand, 初め (number one) is used for the first one of a series of recurring actions/events. For example, 初回は無料です means “free for the first time”, which implies that the prospective customer may use the same service more than one times.

Suppose that the speaker is a singer and she was asked to perform at a music event.

The Japanese sentence “初めは断ったんです” suggests that the singer was offered by the event organizer more than one times. The speaker turned down the first offer, but finally accepted it (maybe because the initial fee was too low.)

If you replace 初めは with 始めは, the altered sentence means “she was asked to be on stage as an opening singer.” She was happy to perform on stage after some other singers. But she didn’t want to be the opener. So, she turned down the offer of the “starter” role. 始めは断った doesn’t mean that the event organizer offered the singer several times.

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#3

So a film or a speech or a class or a life has a 始め, but going fishing or visiting Japan may have a 初め, a first time, after which I take a break and go home before returning for a second time. To put it in mathematical terminology, 始め is applied to something that is continuous, whereas 初め is applied to something that is discrete, something that comes in “bits” with a definite boundary or gap between the bits. So the days of September have a 初め, a first day or days, because at each midnight, and at no other time, what day it is changes instantly. What a great distinction to make! And made, moreover, not by having two differently pronounced words but by writing the “same” word with different 漢字.

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#4

@Terence
I believe you now understand the basics of the difference between 始 and 初.

As advanced food of thought, I give you some tricky quizzes.

  1. 初夏 (pron. しょか) means “early summer” or “the beginning of summer”. We don’t say 始夏 but we say 夏の始め (pron. なつのはじめ).

  2. We say both 年初 (pron. ねんしょ) or 年初め (pron. としはじめ) and 年始 (pron. ねんし) or 年始め (pron. としはじめ).

Can you explain the difference?

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#5

For :hash:2 I would think that 年始 refers to the first day or first few days of the year but 年初 would be used when talking about the first time that something happened during the year, even if that something happened in December. However, for :hash:1 I’m still puzzled. I note that in this case the 漢字 are the other way round, with 初 coming first. I would think that 初夏 should mean “the first summer (in some series of summers)” but it doesn’t.

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#6

Is 初夏 a word meaning “early summer” or “the beginning of summer” because 初夏 is the name of the fourth month in the lunar calendar and thus the first month of summer? It’s as if someone said, “You want a word that means ‘the beginning of summer’? We already have one. It’s 初夏, the first month of summer.” Similarly for 初春, 初秋, and 初冬. And these words are the right words for the months of the lunar calendar because each of these months is the first in a series of months, a series of three months, and so it must be 初 rather than 始.

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#7

@Terence

Answers:

  1. 初 in 初夏 has a connotation of “make a clean start” or “start from square ONE” of the season. Summer comes every year as if we push the “reboot” button of a computer or as if Buddhists believe in reincarnation. In this context. we also refer to the first several days of each month as 初旬 (pron. しょじゅん).

  2. Your understanding of the difference between 年始 and 年初 is correct. 年初来高値 (pron. ねんしょらいたかね) をつけました, for example, means “Company X’s stock or Dow Jones Index marked the highest price of the year.”

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