I’ve been watching a detective anime for a while, and I’ve noticed that some phrases in English are used when Japanese equivalent phrases exist. For example, every time they say “dying message” they say it in English rather than saying “瀕死の伝言 “, and in one episode someone used the English for “dry flowers” instead of just saying “乾燥したの花”. This seems so random to me. Why does it happen?
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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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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”