Noncompositional

A recent discussion revealed to me two Japanese verbs, 褒める (homeru) and 褒め称える (hometataeru), each of which is basically equivalent to praise, but with one crucial difference: the former can only be used by a superior to an inferior (or by one equal to another), whereas the latter is reserved specifically for an inferior praising a superior.　Though no dictionary I could get my hands on (Japanese-English or native Japanese) explicitly mentions this (nor do any of the entries for the words that they use in their definitions　(which include ほめたてる, ほめそやす, and 称賛 - and yes the first two are compounds that contain the basic word homeru), except for one that has さかんにほめる sakan-ni homeru, which means (literally) something like ‘praise vigorously,’ but I think means, along with most of these other words, ‘give congratulations to,’ or ’shower praise upon.’ A lot of the example sentences have to do with gaining public approval or admiration. So I got to thinking: what do we have in English like this?

Well, for starters, the word praise itself lends itself towards uses where the praiser is in a superior position and the praisee is in an inferior one. Not surprising - this is our general idea of what praise should be like. The President can praise the action of the troops, the teacher can praise the student, and the parent can praise the child. Not the other way around… but hey, there are examples of children and students praising their elders, and there’s no real problem with praising the president. So while there might be a tendency to think about it in a certain way, there’s nothing totally wrong with using praise the “wrong” way.

(Incidentally, google.co.jp turns up no results for 大統領を褒めた ‘praised the president’ or 先生を褒めた ‘praised the teacher,’ one for ‘praised the prime minister,’ and a few dozen for praising students or pupils)

Then I thought of this phrase: I couldn’t have done it better myself. Imagine being a student or someone in a lower position and praising one’s teacher or elder associate with this. Sounds like you’re an arrogant prick, basically. Now, you can imagine all sorts of different circumstances to get the right situation for this compliment to work that are right on the borderline: you’re a physics grad student who is also well-versed in architecture, and praise an landscape design instructor for his lecture in his non-specialty of physics — not bad. Or maybe you’re a star geometry student (you’ve already done the homework) and you praise the new, straight-out-of-college geometry teacher for a great lesson on proofs — probably walking on thin ice. But you get the idea. There has to be some asymmetry in superiority or at least in area of expertise, and hopefully both. Do I have to say it? (cough territory of information cough). I didn’t think so.

And just to cover my bases: even if you don’t believe me about homeru, most elementary students of Japanese know about なかなか nakanaka, meaning ‘quite,’ and often collocated with positive-evaluatory adjectives. And they should know: the teacher uses this word for your still-misshapen-but-now-legible kanji, and absolutely not the other way around.

(note: I’ve also heard that superior, as in superior job! (or something) is like this as well. This seems to accord with my limited intuition on the word.)