Thursday, January 1, 2026

Proverb 19: Weak meat

Here is today's proverb:

弱肉強食

And in romaji:

jaku niku kyo shoku

And English: "Weak meat, strong eat."

This is the opposite of the Buddha's vision of the world — the law of the jungle, without compassion — but I could not resist including it because of the natural rhyme that happens in the English translation. I am also a fan of these 4-character sayings which are used both in Chinese and in Japanese, and in Korean too. You can see all three languages together on the same page here. These types of 4-character sayings are called chengyu in Chinese, yojijukugo in Japanese, and sajaseong-eo in Korean. This is a well-known saying, so I found lots of illustrated versions online, like this one:



My vocabulary for today:


にく
"flesh, meat"





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