What Beast?
You may be wondering why this guide is called Bunkai Beast.
Bunkai is the name of a demon hag that I dated back in college.
No, not really. It’s nothing that entertaining. The word 分解 (ぶんかい), in Japanese, means “to disassemble; to understand (by breaking into pieces)." This makes sense, because 分 (ぶん- // bun-) means “part” or “division,” and 解 (-かい // -kai) means “untie; unravel.” If you unravel something into parts, then you understand it, right?
But the characters that I *originally used for the title of this course are not 分解 (ぶんかい // bunkai). I changed the first character, writing: 文解 (ぶんかい // bunkai). The character 文 (ぶん), by itself, means “sentence.” So, we are “unraveling (解) sentences (文)” in order to understand them, and it’s also a play on the word 分解, which means “understanding (by dismantling).” Boring to some, but very exciting for a word nerd like me.
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*Note: This explanation isn't really relevant anymore because our logo for this course no longer has the Japanese characters 文解 in it. Still, I can't help but explain why we called it this because this course's name is near to my heart. ^_^ |
So a fancy name for this guide might have been: “Dismantling Japanese Sentences Like a Pro.” Ugh. Kill me. But yeah, I thought that “Bunkai Beast” sounded better.
Cool?
Cool.
Cool! Let’s look at what this guide will teach us…