The Nintendo Switch is region free, and many (not all) games, including Octopath Traveler, have the full Japanese text and audio available in the U.S. release of the game. No need to import from Japan! This is an amazing resource for gamers who are learning Japanese. Here’s my latest grab!
Kanji: 損切り
Hiragana: そんぎり
Romaji: songiri
English: To cut your losses.
Teresa scolds, 「損切りってやつよ、知ってるよね？」songiri tte yatsu yo. shitteru yone? This phrase means, “It’s about cutting your loses, you know that right?”
They key phrase itself should be somewhat easy to internalize, even though I don’t think I had heard it before seeing it in this game. The first character means 損 (そん) “loss.” 損する is the verb form and literally means to “lose” in the sense of profit and loss, not to lose a competition (負ける) and not in the sense of misplacing and object (なくす). The second character means “cut,” so the characters point to the “cut loss” meaning directly.
The grammar immediately following is very informal, as is the entire speech bubble. Our hero says, 損切りってやつよ.
ってやつ is a very informal way of saying ということ. She’s saying, that she’s talking about the thing called “cutting your losses.” She then follows by saying, 知ってるよね, you know that right? It should be a snarky tone, translated something like… “It’s called ‘cutting your losses.’ You have heard of that concept… right?” So sassy!
I tweeted this as well! Check my Twitter account @Japannewbie for more occasional Japanese language tidbits from games.