Question
I meet an online conversation partner every week, and listening is still by far the weakest part of my Japanese. Last time she was telling me about a movie she had seen and used a word that sounded like “bimyou” — I had no idea what it meant, so I just nodded, and the rest of the story got away from me.
I want to be able to stop and check instead of pretending I followed. How do I say “What do you mean?” in Japanese?
Answer by Professional Japanese Teacher
どういう意味ですか。
Dou iu imi desu ka?
What do you mean?
「微妙」ってどういう意味ですか。
“Bimyou” tte dou iu imi desu ka?
What does “bimyou” mean?
Dou iu imi desu ka? is the phrase you want. Imi means “meaning” and dou iu is “what kind of,” so you are asking what kind of meaning something carries. Use it the moment you lose the thread, instead of nodding and hoping it comes back. Asking would have told you her bimyou was a gentle “not really.” Your dictionary’s “subtle” is a different sense of the same word.
The version you will reach for most points at one word. Say the word you did not catch, add tte, then finish the same way. That tte works like spoken quotation marks, and almost any word slots in:
「懐かしい」ってどういう意味ですか。
“Natsukashii” tte dou iu imi desu ka?
What does “natsukashii” mean?
One thing to watch: aimed straight at something a person has just said, Dou iu imi desu ka? can land a little sharp, closer to “what are you implying?” than “sorry, I didn’t follow.” Opening with sumimasen takes that edge off, and pointing the question at the word rather than at their whole sentence sidesteps it. With a friend, you can drop the ending and just say Bimyou tte dou iu imi?