Language Question

7 comments

1. From what I understand a lot of old Japanese words are being replaced by words in English likely due to the influence of American media

2. Omg are you watching Detective Conan?
   Also I notice that they do that a lot in manga as well.
   Example, Cardcaptor Sakura she says “レリーズ”, but the kanji is “封印解除” ふういんかいじょ which means “to rescind/call off the seal”.
   I’ve heard they do it because it flows better, but not sure.

3. One reason is that the concept represented by a foreign word is new.

   Another reason is that katakana words translated from foreign languages seem cool or sophisticated.

4. I still remember the first time I asked this, it was in Osaka and fruits Daifuku was in season.
   We were on the escalator, when I asked “Why is it フルーツ大福 and not 果物大福”?
   My friend straight faced replied me “Because it is cooler” and I LOLed

5. When it comes to that kind of thing in anime, it seems to me like it adds some kind of dramatic effect that gets lost when ur a native english speaker

6. why use the word コンピューター or パソコン when the perfectly cromulent Japanese word 電子計算機 exists???

   Anime uses more random English phrases like this than day-to-day Japanese, but Japanese has a ton of English loanwords. There’s been a noticeable shift even in the last 10-20 years towards more loanwords, like I’ve never heard the term we’re taught for café in Japanese lessons, 喫茶店, used in conversation – people just say カフェ – but conversely sometimes overuse of English-katakana words comes across as out of touch. A good example of that was the new station 高輪ゲートウェイ in Tokyo which really just should have been 高輪 – adding gateway to it makes it sound like someone never left the 90s.

7. One of the worst experiences I had was while watching Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood.

   In the episode where they meet the “Father” homunculus, Edward says while fighting him “Mousho mo nai” I searched any combination of もうしょう you can imagine thinking it was a Japanese word. Netflix had no Japanese CC subs

   Until I finally realized he was saying MOTION. He was saying モーションもない “without even moving” in a strange combo of Japanese-English. I was just not expecting that at all.

   Also had the same feeling when I looked at the original title of “All you need is kill” as well. I makes you feel like “Why do I even bother, Japan clearly wants to use English now”