Related to this question: What is the Japanese word or phrase for "to post on the internet"?
I have noticed that when you post something on twitter they don't say 投稿する toukou suru, but instead say つぶやく (murmur).
Why did this happen?
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4Although I agree with you that つぶやき (noun) and つぶやく (verb) are the most common translations of “Tweet,” an interesting fact is that the official Japanese terms for “Tweet” are ツイート (noun) and 投稿する (verb). According to the Japanese Wikipedia, they used the word つぶやき on twitter.com in earlier days, but they no longer use the word つぶやき officially.– Tsuyoshi ItoJun 7, 2011 at 5:53
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4 Answers
Well in English Twitter doesn't use the word "Post" but "Tweet". Twitter's translator decided to make it an equivalent word that would make sense to someone who had never heard of it before.
Check out this J article covering the use of フォローする and つぶやく. http://www.itmedia.co.jp/news/articles/0907/29/news054.html
According to Wikipedia,
That translation is done by 枝洋樹 and the English word "Tweet"'s direct translation to Japanese is さえずる but it is mainly used for birds. He thought that closest one for human would be つぶやく.
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4I can imagine why he did not use the word さえずる: さえずる is inappropriate because it is used as a derogatory word which means “to speak fast about meaningless things” (similar to the English word “clack”). Jun 7, 2011 at 5:46
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@Tsuyoshi: Ah, so that's why! I've long wondered why つぶやく was chosen over さえずる. I didn't realize さえずる had that negative connotation. Jun 7, 2011 at 15:29
It's because つぶやく pretty much means "mutter to oneself" and that's what most tweets end up being. Just talking by yourself.
In case you are interested, the japanese social networking site MIXI also uses つぶやく for it's status update / tweet like functionality
