Why are your favourite katakana words that people think come from English, but actually don’t?

34 comments

1. I always thought it was a little silly when I heard my ex use the phrase レベルアップ (level up) in not-gaming contexts. It always seemed like slightly out of place to me, but I guess its more flexible in Japanese! haha

2. I’m not sure if this fits your question. But my favorite is **ドンマイ**! **Donmai** as in don’t mind.

3. my favourite is タイマン

4. Actually I have a weird example

   I thought 邪魔 was ジャッマー and came from “jammer” like to jam a signal. To get in the way of… so to speak.

   😂 inadvertently became a mnemonic.

5. For the longest time, I thought セリフ somehow came from “serif.” But it turns out that it actually doesn’t? and that it might even be native Japanese, and no one’s quite sure? Strange case!

6. BTW arbeit means work in German.

7. Hotchkiss 🥲

8. バリカン　Hair trimmer. From the name of a French company.

9. One of the more puzzling aspects of Japanese is the way English words are sometimes given a new meaning.

10. アルコール、アスベスト、コップ and many, many more. They come from Dutch, as the Netherlands and Japan have a very long history together (western studies was called 蘭学, or “Dutch Studies”). Dutch sounds very similar to English, so people think these words come from English, but technically speaking they don’t 🙂

11. There is an [extensive list of loan words with their origin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gairaigo_and_wasei-eigo_terms?wprov=sfti1) here

12. I hear ワンチャン being used a lot.

13. ホチキス or Stapler. Not actually a word, but rather a brand of staplers. Another is ノルマ, or norm/quota/factory standard, which actually comes from Russian (If I’m not mistaken).

14. The first one I remember coming across was ウイルス, wondered why it wasn’t something like バイルス/ヴァイルス for the longest time before I finally thought to look it up and learned it’s borrowed from German! (Spelled the same as in English but pronounced more like “vee-roos”)

15. it’s not really what op asked but my teenage sil uses マイペース to justify being a lazy twat.

16. Doesn’t ファイト mean a fight? I looked it up on jisho to double check myself and it says it does

17. サーティワン is not what you think it is

18. ワクチン (vaccine) and エネルギー (energy) are from German and are not bad English transliterations.

19. マロン! I kept seeing マロン desserts everywhere and I was so confused what it was, and when I asked my Japanese friend she was shocked I didn’t know… “I thought it was English!” She exclaimed. Now I know it’s chestnut lol

20. An example of the opposite for me, for the longest time I didn’t realize that “ボランティア” was supposed to be “volunteer”. Like if you think about what the words mean it’s obvious but the words just sounded so different to me.

21. Definitely ニューハーフ

22. I was roped in as local English speaker to assist in a local primary school English class, where I learnt that the correct word for chestnut in English is apparently マロン.

23. ズボン　which is from the French “jubon”

    Also simply パン which comes from portuguese, I was very surprised when I first saw it because in my native language (another romance one) it sounds almost exactly the same and, until then, I only thought that katakana was used for english loan words

24. A Japanese person I talked to recently got baited by ブラウン管テレビ, and said Braun Tube TV instead of CRT TV.

25. I like words like スマート because it’s from English but the meaning has absolutely nothing to do with the English meaning.

26. I got a kick out of the fact bread is パン which is French (pain) pronounced the same way.

27. ワイン

28. This isnt a katakana word, but when i first heard the word “せってい” i thought it would surely be a loan word from english “settings” or something similar. But no, it turned out it was 設定 🤯

29. エネルギー from German “Energie” and not English “energy”. But of course Japan has words like エナジーセーブ or エナジードリンク to generate more confusion. 😀

    During the Meiji restoration Japan bought technical stuff from the USA and Germany and therefore some words have a German origin but look similar to English because English and German are related. That’s also the reason why until today Japan has two different utility frequencies. Tokyo bought a German generator with 50 Hz and Osaka a US one with 60 Hz.

    When it comes to 和製英語 my alltime favorite is ベビーカー. Makes me smile everytime I hear it.

30. Many words in japanese are actually taken from German.

    アルバイト comes from german Arbeit (work). Not just just part-time though.

    リュックサック for example is also from German Rucksack (backpack)

31. サラリーマン

    エネルギー

    プラスアルファ

32. ヒップ or hippu . Japanese people think it means “butt”.
    Wanna have some risky fun? Ask your students to stand up and touch their hips. You can get away with us if it’s a mixed group of students. Don’t just do it to one girl or it’s borderline sexual harassment. Lol

33. ビール is the one that always comes to mind for me. First assumption for most people is it’s simply the English word Beer, but it actually came from Dutch Bier.

34. ベビーカー “baby car” for stroller