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Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
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It's even better when the English word is so riddled with vowel syllabics that Japanese phonemes require that it wraps all the way around and becomes unrecognizable...even when it's "English." My fav: Makkudonarudo - マックドナルド even tho most people just call it "Maku-do" for McDonalds.
Also, gotta watch out... just when you think "Pants" is just "Pantsu" you actually just said "underwear" in Japanese.
I think "pants" is also underwear in the UK.
just when you think "Pants" is just "Pantsu" you actually just said "underwear" in Japanese.
To be fair, that’s also the case in English.
Yeah they have plenty of false friends. But that is also because a lot of words come from other languages not just English. Like how パン pan means bread, which comes from Portuguese Pão. The Chinese word Bao also has the same origin.
Here are some Japanese words that are false friends:
マンション literally Mansion but means apartment building or condominium.
コンセント Consent means electrical outlet.
バイキング Viking means buffet.
パーカー Parka can also mean hoodie not just the jacket.
ハンドル Handle means steering wheel.
ハンドルキーパー Handle Keeper is designated driver.
トレーナー Trainer means sweatshirt
Or close false friends like
ハイテンション high tension means very excited or energetic in a positive way unlike the English meaning.
ワイシャツ white shirt is a dress shirt but can be any color not just white. Probably because Japanese office worker dress code used to be a white dress shirt. Couldn’t even wear a light blue one.
So I made a Japanese learning game on steam and I get hit with negative reviews all the time because it doesn't have enough real Japanese words in it. /facepalm
Link?
No idea what one the person you replayed to made, but Wagotabi is good. It also updates fairly regularly.
Bistek in Spanish for Beefsteak here always makes me laugh.
Learned in French class the word for roast beef is... rosbif.
Rosbif is also slang for ze English. Also, we have the word bifteck for beef steak.
I still get a chuckle out of the PIN pads in Spain when they say "Numero Secreto Correcto"
How about "chope" for "chopped pork"?
In Polish it's "befsztyk" (pronounced "beff-shtick")
So maybe I'm not so stupid for frequently thinking, every time I start Signal (the app): "Sigunaru."
They'd say shigunaru
Like that South Park episode about Xbox vs PlayStation.
“Sony has announced a new Black Friday bundle, called the ‘Burack Friday Bunduru.’”
Somehow I just knew these words would get the Japanizu treatment
It must be because they love and respect British culture so much, right? 😁 (pic related: Japan when they find out about britain)
My absolute favourite is
フライドポテト furaido poteto
French fries
They sell delicious sand as well. My favourite is tuna sand.
My favorite thing after a good sand is a nice grass jelly
When I was a kid, before you could translate stuff on the internet and we were waiting months for the new batch of translated Dragonball Z episodes to hit Toonami (I swear, if I come home from school today and it's goddamn Radditz again, I'm gonna Destructo Disc my mom's Camry), I got like a tiny little I guess travel book for translating English to Japanese thinking that maybe I'd start learning.
The only word I remember is "hamburger" because the book showed the Japanese pronunciation as "haam baah gaah" lol
My favorite in my one semester of college Japanese was:
Hotto chokareto (hot chocolate)
ホットチョコレート
There is also cases where they strait up invent English word. Like ベビーカー, pronounced "babika", which is supposed to sound like "baby car", and means "stroller".
