Re: Japan Nuclear Meltdown Thread
Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2011 9:32 pm
Oops, forgot comic-related words ("manga" as a Japanese loanword to English suffers from the same disease as English loanwords to Japanese, i.e. no new meaning, or else artificially added meaning (it just means "comics" in Japanese)) and non-martial-arts cultural words (like shogi or bonsai or Zen).
"Hentai" is one of those x-rated words that sort of masks the meaning in English by being a bit obscure - again, there is some artificially added meaning by English-speakers. "Bukkake" falls into this category, too (this is unfortunately RSF's best-known Japanese loanword I think).
Bonsai is a pretty good loanword, though - a pretty new idea, so it's all good.
Sashimi/sushi is also good, too, as it sort of means "edible raw fish" as opposed to "just raw fish"
Anyway, loanwords seem to become prevalent when a certain uber-culture appears, and the other cultures seem to feel prestigious when imitating it... Various cultures have been this uber-culture before, like France, China, and the US...
I am in firm denial of wabisabi I think that actually, there is no definition, it is just a nebulous concept of something intrinsically Japanese and unexplainable, yet all Japanese understand it (bah!). Zen is one of those unfortunate Chinese words' Japanese versions which were found by the West first, and thus "won" (kind of like "ki" vs. "qi," but the latter is winning these days).
Interloper, I suspect that your boyfriend had lots of Japanese friends/coworkers while living in the States? Seems strange that his pronunciation didn't change at all (especially since he had you to provide him with a model voice ). It does seem that women are better at assimilating phonemes better than men in general, though.
One girl in China I met who seemed to speak perfect American English - she had never been to the US, though, and said that she learned from movies
"Hentai" is one of those x-rated words that sort of masks the meaning in English by being a bit obscure - again, there is some artificially added meaning by English-speakers. "Bukkake" falls into this category, too (this is unfortunately RSF's best-known Japanese loanword I think).
Bonsai is a pretty good loanword, though - a pretty new idea, so it's all good.
Sashimi/sushi is also good, too, as it sort of means "edible raw fish" as opposed to "just raw fish"
Anyway, loanwords seem to become prevalent when a certain uber-culture appears, and the other cultures seem to feel prestigious when imitating it... Various cultures have been this uber-culture before, like France, China, and the US...
I am in firm denial of wabisabi I think that actually, there is no definition, it is just a nebulous concept of something intrinsically Japanese and unexplainable, yet all Japanese understand it (bah!). Zen is one of those unfortunate Chinese words' Japanese versions which were found by the West first, and thus "won" (kind of like "ki" vs. "qi," but the latter is winning these days).
Interloper, I suspect that your boyfriend had lots of Japanese friends/coworkers while living in the States? Seems strange that his pronunciation didn't change at all (especially since he had you to provide him with a model voice ). It does seem that women are better at assimilating phonemes better than men in general, though.
One girl in China I met who seemed to speak perfect American English - she had never been to the US, though, and said that she learned from movies