For example, I’ve seen: – “make” for makeup, as in “hair & make” – “dust” for dustbin, as in “non-burnable dust” – “sand” for sandwich, as in “hot sand”
I’ve seen a permanent (hair) called “Parm” several times before. Old, but Misdo for Mister Donut, and the venerable Sutaba for Starbucks. If I go out with a group to eat the person who collects the money will hold up a number of fingers for the amount each person owes. One guy put up one finger so I gave him ¥1000 and he laughed and then held up 9 fingers after that.
mobaju = mobile juudenki
It would be practically endless.
There must be thousands.
We actually had a training session one time (in Japanese) where the topic came up of how we shouldn’t use so many katakana words. We have a sales director (Japanese) who uses them constantly.
サンド written in English as “Sand” will never fail to amuse me. Eg “Chicken Sand”
I don’t know how common this is elsewhere, but in my company, “MTG” is used as an abbreviation for “meeting.” I always think of the card game…
KY?
ホーム for railway platform.
チンポジ
One I personally absolutely despise.
スクショ – Screenshot.
“Make” technically is not an abbreviation for Japanese. “Make” itself is makeup in Japanese. They dont use the word makeup.
ほうれんそう always catch me off guard, abbreviated from 報告(ほうこく) 連絡(れんらく) 相談(そうだん), but looking up ほうれんそう in dictionary will always give “spinach” as the first result.
Video game’s name are also shorten to 2-4 syllables. Monster hunter to モンハン, tear of the kingdom to ティアキン, omega striker to オメスト
Kyoto has nomaikaade for “let’s use public transportation day”
Actually NTT has a bunch of similar ones for each of their systems.
Reform for remodeling. Gives me revolution overthrow the government vibes
[deleted]
Every time I hear ファミレス I think of family-less. Just me?
ブレスト or something like that for “Brainstorming”.
So my japanese company had this meeting room called “Breast Space”
リア充 for リアルライフが充実している人
Ahh I got hit with メーアド for email address at work. Took me a second.
Always have mixed feelings about those. I like konbini as it’s already established as its “own” name rather than an abbreviation.
But Jesus Christ I hate it from the bottom of my heart when they purposely make something long just to create the abbreviation.
Happens a lot in promo campaigns and anime. Just use a normal fk name…
I could be here all day with the blatantly incorrect misappropriations of English words into Japanese. Katakana abbreviations I don’t really have a problem with but blatant wasei-eigo needs to fuck off and die. Like the other comment said, ノーマイカーデー? Get outta here.
” エロゲ “
The one that really annoys me on social media is girls posting “todays code” like 今日のコーデ short for コーディネート coordination for their outfit of the day. Every fucking time I’m like “nnnnooooooo that’s コード” at least sandwich and makeup are actually spelled correctly
TKG for Tamago Kake Gohan 🤣
Some are handy, like “appo” for appointment. Some, for some reason, grate on me: softo cream. I don’t know why their abbreviation for soft-serve ice cream bugs me, but I dislike hearing softo cream.
DX, IR, FD, DP, then weird waseieigo shit like “governance,” “compliance,” and the recent “invoice” crap. Every day is “that word doesn’t mean what you think it means.”
For IT people, My fave is イクニイロハ to say 192.168 quicker
Dog for “hotdog” :/
Ice (アイス）for ice cream.
Always catches my kids off guard. Always have to remind them that the cream is essential otherwise they’re saying they like to chow down on ice cubes lol
It’s infinite. And sometimes when you join a circle of friends, they have their own and they reuse their own stuff or have their own weird Japanglish things. My wife and her friends from college all speak English excellently, but damn if they don’t also have their own creole going on.
I love Sand.
マザコン mazacon
My manager uses リスケ to mean reschedule which took me a few minutes to figure out.
There’s a science fiction movie on Netflix right now, **In The Earth**, which the title transliterates to **イン ・ ザ ・ アス.**
Not quite what you asked, but hey.
Claim (ku-re-i-mu) = complain is a weird one to me
The first time I saw パイン as a flavour, I was so confused as to why pine tree would be appetizing.
Then I realized it was short for pineapple.
OP if you’re just talking about cases where the abbreviation in English has a different meaning: ネイル (neiru) for nail polish. I just recently bought some nail polish remover that literally read ネイルリムーバー (neiru rimu-ba-) on it, which I thought was amusing and mildly horrifying 😂
31 ice cream for Baskin Robin for me.
like it blows my mind.
ワンチャン
ガラス = glass (window) グラス = glass (cup)
Aight then. I guess I’m glad grass is not also on this list.
* ヘビロテ – something you wear often (heavy rotation) * パンツ – underwear (how many times did I mix this with ズボン…)
The カツ in とんかつ is for カツレツ, cutlet. This one even made it to hiragana somehow.
I believe it stems from Japanese language, where unlike English they use syllables to abbreviate / acronymize.
Not really an abbreviation, but the rest of the comments sent me on a tangent too.
I’m only at beginner level Japanese, but Konsento (コンセント) for a power socket seems strange to me. Not sure how common this one is, but that’s what I’ve been taught. Presume it’s short for some other archaic way of saying it in English/US that I’m unaware of, but it sounds like you’re asking for consent (which you should – just not like this 🤣).
50 comments
Are you including the ubiquitous ones like ‘konbini’ for ‘convenience store’? I think it’s going to be a very long list.
Or only ones still written in the Latin alphabet?
skinhead = bald person
It’s common in my office to see staff abbreviate “double” as “W” in email. I had no idea at first what they were referring to.
90% of waseigo is odd.
First one that comes to mind is “cospa” — cost-performance.
EDIT: found a couple more watching some youtube videos
* コーデ – coordination (as in your outfit of the day)
* アラサー – person around thirty years old
* ジーパン – jean pants
* ビーサン – beach sandals
Nothing beats [ファッキン](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Kitchen) for First Kitchen
Sekuhara or powahara
I’ve seen a permanent (hair) called “Parm” several times before. Old, but Misdo for Mister Donut, and the venerable Sutaba for Starbucks. If I go out with a group to eat the person who collects the money will hold up a number of fingers for the amount each person owes. One guy put up one finger so I gave him ¥1000 and he laughed and then held up 9 fingers after that.
mobaju = mobile juudenki
It would be practically endless.
There must be thousands.
We actually had a training session one time (in Japanese) where the topic came up of how we shouldn’t use so many katakana words. We have a sales director (Japanese) who uses them constantly.
サンド written in English as “Sand” will never fail to amuse me. Eg “Chicken Sand”
I don’t know how common this is elsewhere, but in my company, “MTG” is used as an abbreviation for “meeting.” I always think of the card game…
KY?
ホーム for railway platform.
チンポジ
One I personally absolutely despise.
スクショ – Screenshot.
“Make” technically is not an abbreviation for Japanese. “Make” itself is makeup in Japanese. They dont use the word makeup.
ほうれんそう always catch me off guard, abbreviated from 報告(ほうこく) 連絡(れんらく) 相談(そうだん), but looking up ほうれんそう in dictionary will always give “spinach” as the first result.
Video game’s name are also shorten to 2-4 syllables.
Monster hunter to モンハン, tear of the kingdom to ティアキン, omega striker to オメスト
Kyoto has nomaikaade for “let’s use public transportation day”
“Do Communications Over the MObile Network”, i.e. [docomo](https://www.docomo.ne.jp/corporate/about/outline/identity/#:~:text=%E7%A4%BE%E5%90%8D%E3%81%AE%E7%94%B1%E6%9D%A5,%E7%B6%B4%E3%81%A3%E3%81%9F%E3%82%82%E3%81%AE%E3%81%A8%E3%81%97%E3%81%BE%E3%81%97%E3%81%9F%E3%80%82).
Actually NTT has a bunch of similar ones for each of their systems.
Reform for remodeling. Gives me revolution overthrow the government vibes
[deleted]
Every time I hear ファミレス I think of family-less. Just me?
ブレスト or something like that for “Brainstorming”.
So my japanese company had this meeting room called “Breast Space”
リア充 for リアルライフが充実している人
Ahh I got hit with メーアド for email address at work. Took me a second.
Always have mixed feelings about those. I like konbini as it’s already established as its “own” name rather than an abbreviation.
But Jesus Christ I hate it from the bottom of my heart when they purposely make something long just to create the abbreviation.
Happens a lot in promo campaigns and anime. Just use a normal fk name…
I could be here all day with the blatantly incorrect misappropriations of English words into Japanese. Katakana abbreviations I don’t really have a problem with but blatant wasei-eigo needs to fuck off and die. Like the other comment said, ノーマイカーデー? Get outta here.
” エロゲ “
The one that really annoys me on social media is girls posting “todays code” like 今日のコーデ short for コーディネート coordination for their outfit of the day. Every fucking time I’m like “nnnnooooooo that’s コード” at least sandwich and makeup are actually spelled correctly
TKG for Tamago Kake Gohan 🤣
Some are handy, like “appo” for appointment. Some, for some reason, grate on me: softo cream. I don’t know why their abbreviation for soft-serve ice cream bugs me, but I dislike hearing softo cream.
DX, IR, FD, DP, then weird waseieigo shit like “governance,” “compliance,” and the recent “invoice” crap. Every day is “that word doesn’t mean what you think it means.”
For IT people,
My fave is イクニイロハ to say 192.168 quicker
Dog for “hotdog”
:/
Ice (アイス）for ice cream.
Always catches my kids off guard. Always have to remind them that the cream is essential otherwise they’re saying they like to chow down on ice cubes lol
It’s infinite. And sometimes when you join a circle of friends, they have their own and they reuse their own stuff or have their own weird Japanglish things. My wife and her friends from college all speak English excellently, but damn if they don’t also have their own creole going on.
I love Sand.
マザコン mazacon
My manager uses リスケ to mean reschedule which took me a few minutes to figure out.
There’s a science fiction movie on Netflix right now, **In The Earth**, which the title transliterates to **イン ・ ザ ・ アス.**
Not quite what you asked, but hey.
Claim (ku-re-i-mu) = complain is a weird one to me
The first time I saw パイン as a flavour, I was so confused as to why pine tree would be appetizing.
Then I realized it was short for pineapple.
OP if you’re just talking about cases where the abbreviation in English has a different meaning: ネイル (neiru) for nail polish.
I just recently bought some nail polish remover that literally read ネイルリムーバー (neiru rimu-ba-) on it, which I thought was amusing and mildly horrifying 😂
31 ice cream for Baskin Robin for me.
like it blows my mind.
ワンチャン
ガラス = glass (window)
グラス = glass (cup)
Aight then. I guess I’m glad grass is not also on this list.
* ヘビロテ – something you wear often (heavy rotation)
* パンツ – underwear (how many times did I mix this with ズボン…)
The カツ in とんかつ is for カツレツ, cutlet. This one even made it to hiragana somehow.
I believe it stems from Japanese language, where unlike English they use syllables to abbreviate / acronymize.
Not really an abbreviation, but the rest of the comments sent me on a tangent too.
I’m only at beginner level Japanese, but Konsento (コンセント) for a power socket seems strange to me. Not sure how common this one is, but that’s what I’ve been taught. Presume it’s short for some other archaic way of saying it in English/US that I’m unaware of, but it sounds like you’re asking for consent (which you should – just not like this 🤣).