Japan
Google it. Friend me. LOL. Slang reveals a lot about how a culture is adapting to changing times. Take Japenese slang, which includes an acronym meaning “to forget your cell phone” (KW, or keitai wasureru), and a word meaning “someone who is unemployed, unmarried, and not in school” (niito). There's a whole slew of Japanese slang words that reflect new culltural trends—here are five of our favorites:
5. jibetarian
Teenagers who loiter on sidewalks, in train stations, and outside storefronts. The word comes from jibeta, which means “ground.” As you might expect, older generations condemn this trend as yet another example of the country’s growing moral deficit. Those good-for-nothing jibetarians keep leaving their cigarette butts all over my sidewalk!
4. chin-suru
To heat in a microwave. This is actually a Japanese onomatopoeia—the “chin” imitates a microwave beep. We encourage anyone using this word to actually imitate a beeping microwave.
3. otaku
People who are obsessed with Japanese anime or manga. The term comes from taku, the Japanese word meaning “home,” as in, “that person who never leaves his home because he has no life.” It can also apply to people who never leave home because they love watching reruns of Most Extreme Elimination Challenge.
2. KY
Clueless. Kuki wo yomenai literally means “unable to read the atmosphere,” and refers to someone who just doesn’t get it. Many young Japanese people use its shorter English acronym, KY. OMG, that girl with the non-Hello Kitty backpack is, like, sooo KY.
1. sutabaru
To go to Starbucks. Yes, the Japanese actually have a verb that means, “to go to Starbucks.” It’s derived from from the Japanese name for Starbucks, sutabakkusu. If you’re more in the mood for a Big Mac, you can also makuru, or go to McDonald’s. We’re not sure what a trip for a burger and a mocha would be called, but we might very well be the first to coin the term, sutabarumakuru.
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Comments
Posted on 4/14/2009 by
Heather Heinz
As a teacher at a Japanese junior high school, I hear my students using the phrase "KY" frequently, though in the context of more specific moments than suggested above. Thankfully, the KY comments are directed toward me less and less as I learn to navigate the kids' subtle social circles... The Japanese do have an incredible capacity to create new words by absorbing foreign terms, forcing the pronunciation to fit the Japanese syllabary, and then applying them to things not quite the same as their original meaning. Take the word “mansion”. While the average Japanese can pronounce this word in a fair representation of the native English, the interlocutors are going to have difficulty communicating about the subject. The native English speaker will be thinking “luxurious manor in a wealthy neighborhood” while the Japanese is talking about an apartment. Perhaps a slightly larger-than-Japanese-standard apartment, but an apartment all the same. Along the same vein, “smart” means slim and stylish, not brainy. Buffet-style dining is referred to as “Viking” and playing cards are known as “trump”. These aren't just false cognates; they're the same word, somewhat misapplied. In a case of over-generalization, the term “my", a phrase which leads to confusion between my boss and my foreign coworkers on a weekly basis. The Japanese use the word “my” to refer to one's own property, as in “my car”. But if a Japanese is speaking with you about “my car”, she probably means *your* car, not her own. Similarly, if she said “You can ride with my brother; he came in my car”, she actually means “You can ride with my brother; he came in his car.” So, "my" can mean my, your, his, hers, theirs, or ours, depending on the context. Suddenly all the talk about my boss's paycheck and apartment became much more relevant! Another aspect of the adaptation of foreign words to the Japanese tongue is the lack of consonant blends. Foreign words are effectively elongated, as every consonant and many a vowel gets its very own syllable! At first, this isn't so bad: "apple" becomes ap-pu-ru and “system” becomes shi-su-te-mu. Apart from the lack of distinction between L and R sounds and similar blips, a foreigner's ear grows accustomed to this pronunciation within a few days of immersion. Things get out of hand quickly: “McDonald's” becomes the six syllable mouthful ma-ku-do-na-ru-do, “Australia” needs seven syllables (o-o-su-to-ra-ri-a), and “strike” is expanded to five syllables (su-to-ra-i-ku). So the final polishing step in the process of adapting foreign words is excising those pesky final syllables, especially to combine two words into one. For example, personal computer, pronounced "pasonaru konpyuutaa", becomes "pasokon", further shortened to "paso". Ice cream, pronounces “aisu kurimu”, becomes “aisu”, never meaning frozen water. If you should happen to accept a bit of “pine” after a meal, don't worry: it's only pineapple for dessert! Recently, the Japanese syllabary was expanded to include such exotic sounds as va/vi/vu/ve/vo and fa/fi/fe/fo. While still clumsy in the Japanese mouth, the fact that the writing system has begun to incorporate them is a step toward internationalization of the language. It's impossible to read a newspaper in Japan without coming across dozens of loan words. They're here to stay, even to the mind-bogged amusement of native speakers.
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