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 (...
- 35.5k
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 ...
- 49.7k
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{...
- 49.7k
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]]...
- 35.5k
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 ...
- 35.5k
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 ...
- 91
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