35 votes
Accepted

Is the Japanese word "pan" (パン) related in its origins to the Spanish word "pan"?

According to jisho.org パン has its origins from the Portuguese word “pão”, and was originally written as 麺麭 or 麪包 before being written as パン like it is today. Is this pure coincidence or do they ...
  • 7,061
24 votes
Accepted

How to pronounce the English alphabet? (A, B, C, ...)

I share your experience. Sticking straight to the katakana pronunciation below, I have never had the problem of someone not understanding me any more. I believe this is the pronunciation currently ...
  • 47.7k
23 votes

Why does 'アプリストア’ mean appstore?

The word application in Japanese is 「アプリケーション」. The shortened form (akin to app) is 「アプリ」, rather than just 「アップ」 as one might expect coming from English. Therefore the word for app store is, as you'd ...
  • 495
21 votes
Accepted

Does トイレ refer to the British "toilet" or the American "toilet"?

When a word is loaned by another language, it is not always true that a loan word has the exact same meaning as the original word. You have to know how it is used in Japanese to know what it means in ...
  • 2,078
21 votes

Is the Japanese word "pan" (パン) related in its origins to the Spanish word "pan"?

This is not pure coincidence, but the Japanese did not get the word パン from Spanish, but rather Portuguese. The coincidence part is that Spanish and Portuguese are very closely related languages and ...
  • 7,851
21 votes
Accepted

What's the original Japanese word for door, other than the loanword ドア?

Your suspicion is leading you down the right path. ドア is in fact a loanword from English. According to Jisho.org, ドア is used in reference to a Western-style door. This is a door that opens on ...
  • 7,061
20 votes

Do Japanese actually pronounce the "v" sound?

I think on reading ヴァ, ヴィ, etc., people usually try to pronounce it differently from バ, ビ, etc., but with varying success. In fact, I think most Japanese that try to distinguish ヴァ and バ pronounce ...
  • 47.7k
18 votes
Accepted

Which language レシート is adapted from?

Derivation of レシート Numerous dictionaries state that レシート is from English receipt. See, for instance, the Dajisen and Daijirin entries visible here at Kotobank (in Japanese), or here at Wiktionary (...
17 votes

Why is "Wikipedia" written as ウィキペディア instead of ワィキペディア?

ウィ is the standard way of transcribing [wi] or [wɪ]. Similarly ウェ is used for [wɛ] (for example website → ウェブサイト) and ウォ for [wɒ] or [wɔ] (for example wombat → ウォンバット or walkman ウォークマン). Here ウ is ...
  • 47.7k
15 votes
Accepted

Does ガス also mean gasoline in Japanese?

While it does appear in the Japanese dictionaries with the meaning of "gasoline", I would say it is not common to use it like in English, except for a few special cases like ガス欠{けつ}(being out of fuel) ...
  • 2,193
15 votes
Accepted

Transitive English words becoming intransitive 外来語

There should be exceptions, but I suppose this is largely based on the transitivity of the original Japanese verb before it was replaced by the loanword. (~に)キスする = (~に)口づけする (~に)アクセスする = (~に)進入する/...
  • 287k
15 votes
Accepted

Why is beatboxing called 「ヒューマンビートボックス」?

The term is a loanword from the English term human beatbox or beat box: a person that makes musical sounds using the human vocal organs. The abbreviated term is beatbox or beat box. The performer is ...
  • 6,657
14 votes

Did the Japanese have a concept of "Asia" apart from the Eurocentric definition?

Short Answer: As for the Japanese language, we didn't have such a word and I don't think we should have had. Ancient Japanese only knew as far as India, that means they only knew one "landmass" in ...
12 votes
Accepted

Are Japanese terms for the United States and the Soviet Union likely to be confused by native speakers of Japanese?

That's not likely to happen, as long as the survey was conducted in Japanese. USA → アメリカ, 米国{べいこく} As like most nations outside US do, we prefer to abbreviate the country's name to toponym. USSR → ソ連{...
12 votes
Accepted

How can the well-known Tintin become タンタン in Japanese?

The タンタン rendering has a lot to do with the source French pronunciation, [[tɛ̃tɛ̃]]. The [[ɛ]] vowel in the International Phonetic Alphabet is the open-mid front unrounded vowel, halfway between [[a]]...
12 votes

How would I know whether a word existed and was commonly used N years ago?

BCCWJ is a corpus of written Japanese and you can search it here. Type the word in the search box and you can see the published year of the texts in which the word was used. However, it focuses on ...
  • 340
11 votes

What is the most common word used for 'idea'?

Use アイディア (or アイデア) when it's replaceable with resolution, suggestion, etc. If you really want to avoid loanwords, you can use "(良い)考え". What shall we do? Do you have any idea? 何しよう? ...
  • 287k
11 votes

Why would Russian хорошо [xoroʂo] be borrowed as ハラショー?

Because хорошо is pronounced just like ハラショ. http://ja.forvo.com/word/хорошо/
  • 1,484
11 votes
Accepted

Why is this katakana not reversed?

Historical Background According to the 歴史的{れきしてき}経緯{けいい} section of the 縦書{たてが}きと横書{よこが}き article on the Japanese Wikipedia, apparently in the late 1800s it wasn't altogether uncommon for printed ...
11 votes
Accepted

What differences are there between the English word "memo" and the Japanese word "メモ"?

I don't think that メモ is ever used to mean anything that translates to, or related to, the English word memory. As for me, I have always thought of its etymology as English memorandum, and every ...
  • 3,086
11 votes
Accepted

Why isn't there an actual Japanese word for "balcony"?

Traditional Japanese houses are made of wood, so it was indeed fairly uncommon to have balconies above the first (ground) floor due to durability issues. However, some castles and temples did have one ...
  • 287k
10 votes
Accepted

Can the English suffix "-zilla" be translated back into Japanese?

I remember that this "-zilla" caught on for some reason among English-speaking people, and appeared in several software names such as Mozilla, Bugzilla, FileZilla. English Wikipedia even has a page ...
  • 287k
10 votes
Accepted

Words for computer: パソコン or コンピューター

Generally, what Faily Feely said in comment is all: パソコン is thought to be an abbreviation for パーソナルコンピューター (personal computer). When used as パソコン, I'd imagine a (home) desktop PC. When used as ...
  • 1,037
10 votes
Accepted

Why are "loanwords" written in katakana?

Because that's the original purpose of katakana. Katakana was invented to denote the readings of unfamiliar foreign words (although, in those days, "foreign words" mainly referred to words in Asian ...
  • 287k
10 votes
Accepted

How to pronounce 1ターン?

Both いちたーん and いったーん are valid. (As an aside, わんたーん is also very common, especially when it's part of a longer phrase like 1ターンキル.) There may be exceptions I'm not aware of, but basically foreign ...
  • 287k
9 votes

Do Japanese actually pronounce the "v" sound?

tl;dr: It varies, but it is usually a weak "b". It varies from person to person, so some may pronounce it like the English "v", but others may use a strong "b" sound. Originally, Japanese had no ヴ ...

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