Making sense of why 乙嫁語り is translated as "A Bride's Story"


While browsing reddit I came across the expression 乙嫁語り and its translation as
_A Bride's story_.

Now I'm not really far into my kanji studies (maybe a 400-500 characters in),
but since I recognized the 語 and the 嫁, I was a bit confused how one can
translate this as _A Bride's story_. If I'm not mistaken this should be read
as _Otoyomegatari_ (Googleing the name of the Manga confirms this).

  1. What exactly is the 乙 doing here? _Otoyome_ can be translated as [_younger brothers wife_](https://jisho.org/search/otoyome), although then its written as 弟嫁 and not as 乙嫁. And as far as I understand the kanji 乙 itself means something along the lines of [the latter, duplicate, strange, witty](https://jisho.org/search/%E4%B9%99%20%23kanji), which doesn't seem to be related to the title at all.
  2. When talking about the word _tale_ I immediately think about the word 物語, so reading 語り confused me a bit since according to [jisho.org](https://jisho.org/search/%E8%AA%9E%E3%82%8A) it means something along the lines of _talk, narration, topic_ --- so a word that would maybe used to describe a conversation and less a story/tale.

So can somebody maybe explain to me how we get to the translation _A Bride's
story_?




  1. おと (弟 or 乙 in kanji) is an archaic prefix meaning "younger/youngest (in a family, regardless of sex)" or "little lovely". From a 古語辞典:

> ### [おと－ 【弟・乙】](https://kobun.weblio.jp/content/%E4%B9%99)
>
> 接頭語  
>  ①〔人を表す語または人名に付けて〕年下の。末の。「兄（え）宇迦斯（うかし）・弟宇迦斯」。  
>  ②〔人を表す語または人名に付けて〕美しい。愛する。年若い。かわいい。「弟橘比売命（たちばなひめのみこと）」

I don't know how common 乙嫁 was in real archaic Japanese, but the [official
site](https://www.enterbrain.co.jp/pickup/2009/otoyomegatari/) clearly says 乙嫁
in this manga means "beautiful bride". This also means even an average native
speaker does not know what 乙嫁 means. As an aside, you can read about a recent
derivative meaning of 乙
[here](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/1416/5010).

  2. The modern primary meaning of 語り is indeed "narration" (as in a documentary film), but since it's used with an unfamiliar archaic word here, I take it as a nominalized version of 語る (i.e., "talking"). But 物語 is etymologically just 語り preceded by 物, so you can take it simply as a variant of 物語, too.

So possible literal translations of 乙嫁語り would be "Story of a Beautiful Bride"
or "Talking about a Beautiful Bride".




  1. おと (弟 or 乙 in kanji) is an archaic prefix meaning "younger/youngest (in a family, regardless of sex)" or "little lovely". From a 古語辞典:

> ### [おと－ 【弟・乙】](https://kobun.weblio.jp/content/%E4%B9%99)
>
> 接頭語  
>  ①〔人を表す語または人名に付けて〕年下の。末の。「兄（え）宇迦斯（うかし）・弟宇迦斯」。  
>  ②〔人を表す語または人名に付けて〕美しい。愛する。年若い。かわいい。「弟橘比売命（たちばなひめのみこと）」

I don't know how common 乙嫁 was in real archaic Japanese, but the [official
site](https://www.enterbrain.co.jp/pickup/2009/otoyomegatari/) clearly says 乙嫁
in this manga means "beautiful bride". This also means even an average native
speaker does not know what 乙嫁 means. As an aside, you can read about a recent
derivative meaning of 乙
[here](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/1416/5010).

  2. The modern primary meaning of 語り is indeed "narration" (as in a documentary film), but since it's used with an unfamiliar archaic word here, I take it as a nominalized version of 語る (i.e., "talking"). But 物語 is etymologically just 語り preceded by 物, so you can take it simply as a variant of 物語, too.

So possible literal translations of 乙嫁語り would be "Story of a Beautiful Bride"
or "Talking about a Beautiful Bride".

