Joel's Guide to Japlish

Apparently definitions vary, but I like to think of Japlish as being different than Japanese-Engrish. Engrish is English used incorrectly by Japanese people. Japlish is English words that enter the Japanese language and become Japanese. And it’s happening at a surprising rate. There are thousands of Japlish words, with new ones being created everyday. I thought I’d write up a brief description of how it usually happens.

1. English word is translated into the Japanese syllabery.

The Japanese have written characters to represent sounds just like we do, but they don’t technically have a alphabet. They have syllabery. Each written character represents a complete syllable. They have characters to represent the “Ka” “Ki” “Ku”, “Ke” and “Ko” sounds respectively, but no way of writing the unadorned “K”. Consequently Japanese words can never have two consonants next to each other.

Thus, it’s impossible to accurately write an English word in the Japanese syllabery. The English word always gains extra syllables in the translation. A one-syllable name like “Bruce” becomes Bu-Ru-Su.

My own name becomes Jo-E-Ru. (Because they are used to syllabic pronunciation, the Japanese have a hard time hearing soft consonants, like the L at the end of my name, unless it is exaggerated into a “Ru” sound. Thus Joel becomes Jo to the Japanese ear, which is the word for woman. Once I told my students to refer to me as O-Joel-sama (most honorable Joel) and they heard O-Jo-Sama (Princess). I’ve never quite lived that one down.)

Anyway, lets throw in a few more examples to see how this has happened to common Japlish words.

McDonalds—Makudonarudo
Animation—animeeshon
Basketball—BasukettoBoru
Tom Cruise-Tomu Kuruuzu

There are literally thousands and thousands of these, but you get the idea.

2. Word is shortened.
Obviously all those extra syllables can be a bit of a mouth full, so the word is often shortened.
Basketball becomes Basuke
Air conditioner becomes Eakon
Remote Control becomes Remokon
Personal Computer becomes Pasukon

Et cetera. As you can see, the words often become completely unrecognizable. Usually a Japanese person will realize the word has become completely altered from it’s English root, but occasionally you’ll still get some old guy yelling at you, “Pasukon! Pasukon! Don’t you understand me? I’m speaking English.”

3. Word goes back into English (sometimes)
Just for the hell of it, I’m trying to compile a list of English words that have been Japonized, and then went back across the language barrier into English.

So far I’ve only got two:
Anime (shortened form of Animeeshon) and
Karaoke. (Kara is Japanese meaning empty, and Oke is shortened form of Okesutura (Orchestra)).

Not much of a list yet, but send me in more examples if you can think of them.

Link of the Day
The U.S. Army in Iraq has at least twice seized and jailed the wives of suspected insurgents in hopes of "leveraging" their husbands into surrender, U.S. military documents show.
In one case, a secretive task force locked up the young mother of a nursing baby, a U.S. intelligence officer reported. In the case of a second detainee, one American colonel suggested to another that they catch her husband by tacking a note to the family's door telling him "to come get his wife."
(Complete Article Here)

When they kidnap innocents, it's terrorism, when we do it, it's....something else I hope.