Doubt about 適当

Japanese
#1

Hi everyone,
I was retracing my steps and getting to the newly added N4 grammar point “く・に” when in one of the example sentences I saw this:

image

When the meaning was still blurried out I thought for sure that it meant “To talk properly”, while it was actually the complete opposite!

So I went to check 適当 on jisho and found out that it has two almost opposite meanings. So my question is: why in a phrase like that did the translation default to “irresponsibly”? Is it the most common meaning? Perhaps only so when used with に?

Or is it entirely depending on context and in this case it could have equally meant both?

Thanks in advance!

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#2

I don’t think I can properly explain this one, but I was similarly confused.
いい加減 has a similar connotation and also sounds like a “good” thing but mostly isn’t. I think doing “just enough” or a “good amount” is synonymous with halfassery in Japanese.

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#3

It certainly does seem rather confusing at first that 適当 can mean both suitable and irresponsible, but in this particular example, I’d say “suitable” is not a natural choice of words, therefore it will generally be understood as “to talk irresponsibly”.

Basically, I’d say it comes down to which meaning is the most–please excuse me–suitable for the situation. For example, in “a suitable colour for a businessman’s suit” or “to choose a suitable gift for the occasion”, I’m sure 適当 will be understood as meaning suitable, not as irresponsible. But I do agree there’s a little bit of a grey area when the sentence is something like “to behave irresponsibly”, as “to behave suitably” is quite natural as well.

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#4

Kaname naito on YouTube has an awesome video about this word. He has loads of great videos imo.

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#5

Japanese has a lot of words like this. They start out with their “good” meaning and turn into their “bad” meaning through repeated sarcastic use over time. Kind of like how “Sherlock” can both refer to someone who is great at deduction and to someone who isn’t at all.

#6

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#7

You mean めいたんてい, right? :smiley:

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#8

This right here is how Japanese need to be learned in proper context, as many words can be inferred diffently based on accompanying words. For N2 word such as this (I assume), it is way better to just learn the whole phrases.