Over at CNNgo, Robert Poole reports on the top 10 Japanese buzzwords of 2010. And, while most of these fall well outside of my cultural knowledge base, I thought that two illustrate the two-way nature of language contact. Since we've recently explored Japanese words in English, it's worth a brief look at some of the impact English is having on Japanese.
We could start with #3, "ikumen" (イクメン), which combines the English word "men" with the Japanese word for child rearing "iku-ji" to create a word for men who raise children. You can read a more thorough treatment of this phenomena here.
I also liked #9, "-nau" or "Now" (なう). Apparently, you can add this to the end of a tweet to indicate that you're doing some thing right now, or "right nau," as it were. That having been said, can anyone tell me why this is written with hiragana (usually used for Japanese suffixes) and not katakana (usually used in loanwords)?
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
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あぁ！ I didn't even realize that is where イクメン came from... (さすがシェンドは言語学者だね～)
ReplyDeleteなう has a partner with わず or "wazu" ie: was.
coffee shop nau: I'm at the coffee shop now,
coffee shop wazu: I was at the coffee shop. (this is not used very often)
i think it is use in hiragana because hiragana looks cute.
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