Complain and grumble

Today's theme is complaining and grumbling - a common pastime on the interwebs, especially Twitter.

文句を言う　もんくをいう　monku o iu - To complain

ぶつぶつ文句を言う　ぶつぶつもんくをいう　butsubutsu monku o iu To grumble, complain.

Example: あの女はいつもぶつぶつ文句ばっかり言っている　 あのおんなはいつもぶつぶつもんくばっかりいっている。　Ano onna wa itsumo monku bakkari itteiru

• That woman is always/only (itsumo + bakkari) grumbling and complaining.

You might see some manga characters saying ブツブツ or ぶつぶつ... when they are grumbling under their breath.

On the Japanese version of Twitter, 'tweets' are translated as つぶやき、which means murmur(s) or whisper(s). But maybe calling them ぶつぶつ　might be more appropriate ^_^ (Actually I'm not sure why they did not use a more neutral word, or even just ツイッター, but that's another story.

(ぶつぶつ　has another meaning - to be bumpy or pimply or spotty. E.g. a if your face if covered with pimples, it's ぶつぶつ。Raw chicken skin is ぶつぶつ。）

Comments

[Sile]

I've heard someone make a comment once that so and so is 'itsumo butsubutsu' on a drama. The person who translated didn't translate butsubutsu, so now this makes sense to me!! :D

[トリ・ワォーカー]

Thank you! I was trying to figure out why I kept seeing ぶつぶつ　and つぶやく & つぶやき. I thought that since the translation was always "mutter" or "muttering" that was only used when someone was griping which made since to me since mostly people gripe on Twitter in English, haha.

Thanks so much again! You saved me hours of searching for the real meaning. :)

[aellath]

on that last - my mom used to call acne 'dekoboko' or 'dekobokodekoboko' . . .