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+--- Thread: Katakana Fail (/thread-4216.html)
Katakana Fail - mezbup - 2009-10-19
トリケラトプス = triceratops = fail.
Katakana Fail - yudantaiteki - 2009-10-19
Sometimes the abbreviations are impossible to figure out -- I kept seeing カンスト on video game related sites and from the context it clearly meant that some number had been maxxed out (i.e. if you do 99,999 damage or whatever the max is, or if you max your score). But I had to look on hatena to find out that it was an abbreviation of カウンタストップ (counter stop).
Quote:トリケラトプス = triceratops = fail.Why is that "fail"? It's taken from Latin.
Katakana Fail - Jarvik7 - 2009-10-19
Yeah, some are actually English fails.
Katakana Fail - cangy - 2009-10-19
mezbup Wrote:グランプリ = grand prize. Sounds so much more like gran prix.and パリ sounds so much more like the French pronunciation than the English, funny about that...
Katakana Fail - duder - 2009-10-19
im in a play and they are talking about art and シュール kept coming up - its surrealism
Katakana Fail - yudantaiteki - 2009-10-19
シュール is used a lot in slang (at least net-slang) to mean "strange" or 訳わかんない.
Katakana Fail - magamo - 2009-10-19
duder Wrote:im in a play and they are talking about art and シュール kept coming up - its surrealismIf my memory serves me, it's from surréalisme, though the French might say it fails harder.
I wonder who was the first guy to transliterate "anal" as アナル. It's used as a noun in Japanese so "Annals of Mathematics" sounds like a bunch of mathematical butt holes.
Katakana Fail - Blank - 2009-10-19
magamo Wrote:a bunch of mathematical butt holes.Would that be like...Cauchy?
/mathjoke
Katakana Fail - mypapa12 - 2009-10-22
デビルマン for Devil Man. In french: "Débile Man" (translation: Stupid Man!)
Katakana Fail - ruiner - 2009-10-22
mypapa12 Wrote:デビルマン for Devil Man. In french: "Débile Man" (translation: Stupid Man!)That isn't fair: Any portmanteau that ends with 'man' is an automatic naming failure, in any language.
Katakana Fail - KREVA - 2009-10-22
アバウト = いいかげんなさま。おおまかなさま。 = FAIL.
Katakana Fail - nadiatims - 2009-10-23
I much prefer the shortened creative ones like セクハラ, パトカー, マスコミ, バイブ to the katakanarized whole phrases like ノンバーバルコミュニケーション. Japanese words aren't meant to be over 10 characters long. Reading words like that is too much like reading the chemicals on the back of a shampoo bottle. And with words that are too faithful to the english I often have to remind myself in conversation to pronounce it the japanese way.
Anyway one of my favourites is the 不動産屋 シティーホーム. classic!
Katakana Fail - hknamida - 2009-10-23
The only ones that annoy me are 外来語 that don't mean the same thing as the words they're based on. (マンション, etc.)
As for ウィルス, it isn't based on the English pronunciation, but the German (or Latin?) one. We pronounce it similarly in Sweden.
Katakana Fail - furrykef - 2009-11-02
mezbup Wrote:dont forget the computer ウイルス. I was watching TV the other day and actually heard this used. Crackkked up.Except that "virus" is a Latin word, and that's actually how the Romans pronounced it: "wee-roos". Latin "v" is always pronounced "w" in classical pronunciation.
By the way, one thing that pisses me off is when people humorously suggest the plural of "virus" is "virii". Latin doesn't even have any words where -us becomes -ii in the plural. (People are probably thinking of words like radius -> radii, but look more closely: radi-us, radi-i. Only the -us part changes.) Some people would say I'm being pedantic, but really, if you're going to make etymological/grammatical jokes, you should at least know the first thing about the forms you're using. (I'm not saying you should have to learn Latin to make Latin jokes or anything. The failness of "virii" was extremely obvious to me long before I ever started studying Latin...)
yudantaiteki Wrote:Nope, actually, it was Greek. (Compare "rhinoceros", a more obviously Greek word -- the "cera" in "triceratops" is the same root as "ceros" in "rhinoceros".) But it is still how the Greeks would have pronounced it.Quote:トリケラトプス = triceratops = fail.Why is that "fail"? It's taken from Latin.
And now for a genuine fail (much more a fail than many of those mentioned here, in my opinion):
studio = スタジオ, apparently from the belief that it's pronounced study-o.
- Kef
Katakana Fail - yudantaiteki - 2009-11-02
Koujien says Latin. A lot of words were taken from latinized pronunciation of Greek sources.
Katakana Fail - howtwosavealif3 - 2009-11-02
ハンディー HANDY CAP
Katakana Fail - Ben_Nielson - 2009-11-02
Laughed out loud at that one.
Katakana Fail - JimmySeal - 2009-11-02
mezbup Wrote:トリケラトプス = triceratops = fail.Misdirected virulence fail.
Katakana Fail - bennyb - 2009-11-02
マフラー is a scarf (or a car muffler), fair enough, but then スカーフ doesn't mean scarf in the sense of a winter scarf, only those fashionable little handkerchiefs like the kind flight attendants wear.
More of an annoyance than a complete fail.
Katakana Fail - furrykef - 2009-11-02
yudantaiteki Wrote:Koujien says Latin. A lot of words were taken from latinized pronunciation of Greek sources.Merriam-Webster says the word itself came from New Latin, which I wouldn't really conflate with Latin itself. Perhaps that's where the confusion comes from. It's definitely more of a Greek word than a Latin word, though, as all three of its roots -- tri + kerat + ops -- are Greek.
- Kef
Katakana Fail - DrJones - 2009-11-02
ヘリコプター = helicopter
Really funny fail for us spanish speakers. By the way, Japanese and spanish have a lot of sounds in common, which makes for a lot of funny cross-language homophones.
Katakana Fail - furrykef - 2009-11-02
I speak Spanish (as a foreign language) and I don't get it.
EDIT: Oh. プター = "puta", i.e., "whore". Got it. It doesn't quite work, though, since I imagine most speakers will devoice the "u", resulting in "herikop'taa".
Katakana Fail - nadiatims - 2009-11-27
吾 learned a 冷ool 和製英語 today, so 吾'll resurrect this 糸hread:
ペーパードライバー = 人erson with driving licence but no 練ractice
Katakana Fail - mezbup - 2009-11-29
フェラー = fellatio?
彼はいいフェラーですね？ｗｗｗ
日本誤 FTW
Katakana Fail - Tzadeck - 2009-11-29
The biggest かたかな fail I can think of is トランプ, meaning playing cards and coming from 'trump.' Unless there's some history of the word trump that I'm not aware of, that's total failure. I mean, the word trump has something to do with playing cards... but, you know...