Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.?

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - Printable Version

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Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - nest0r - 2011-05-26

I can't speak for people living in Japan, but I think it's widely known among English speakers as a racial slur, and many find it offensive.

Found this via Wikipedia: http://www.spectator.co.uk/wit-and-wisdom/letters/6845783/part_3/letters.thtml

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - yudantaiteki - 2011-05-26

zigmonty Wrote:
yudantaiteki Wrote:
damicore Wrote:but 渡米, come on japs hahaha.
You should avoid using the word "japs", btw.
Totally off topic, but is that word considered offensive in japan or just in the US?

No idea; it's definitely offensive in the US and I wouldn't use it in Japan either, but I don't know about other places.

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - IceCream - 2011-05-26

some people in Japan do also know it's offensive, at least. When i was in Japan, some guy said it, and one of the Japanese people said, "please don't say that, it's not good". Best not to use it, since it pretty much is known as an offensive term anywhere English speaking, and even if it's not widely known in Japan, some people will know it's origin.

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - aphasiac - 2011-05-26

Myrddhin Wrote:There is an expression that fits a newly manufactured car: "a brand new car"

yeh that's the expression!

Yet a "brand new loaf of bread" is completely wrong. Seriously, English must be hell to learn..

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - yudantaiteki - 2011-05-26

Why is that completely wrong? It sounds fine to me. "That was a brand new loaf of bread you just threw away!"

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - zigmonty - 2011-05-26

IceCream Wrote:some people in Japan do also know it's offensive, at least. When i was in Japan, some guy said it, and one of the Japanese people said, "please don't say that, it's not good". Best not to use it, since it pretty much is known as an offensive term anywhere English speaking, and even if it's not widely known in Japan, some people will know it's origin.

Fair enough... when we say offensive, are we talking of the level of Pom or Yank, or are we talking really bad? I just kinda have a hard time believing that a straight-forward abbreviation of "Japanese" is such a big deal. I mean, if the Germans had said "Brit" with negative nuances during WWII, would that make Brit not ok to say? Or is "Japs" still used actively as a slur today?

What's the replacement? We're talking about a people who can't be arsed to say the name of their own nationality (g'day mate, i'm an Aussie!), we sure as hell aren't going to say "japanese" every time. And i'm assuming shortening "Nippon" is out too, right? Tongue

People who turn the most obvious abbreviation of something into a slur should be shot. Why is it that the racist idiots get to use all the good abbreviations and the rest of us are left with nothing?

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - zigmonty - 2011-05-26

yudantaiteki Wrote:Why is that completely wrong? It sounds fine to me. "That was a brand new loaf of bread you just threw away!"

Sounds fine to me too. I think if you're going to make the "crazy english vocab" argument, words like "blood transfusion" are better. I mean, not only is it more or less a single unit you have to learn ("blood injection" is incorrect), but transfusion isn't even a normal word!

My dictionary defines "transfusion" as "an act of transfusing donated blood, blood products, or other fluid into the circulatory system of a person or animal." So it's a compound, the second word of which is *only* really used in this compound (well, you can skip the "blood" part and say "give him a transfusion" but that's got an abbreviated feel i think).

In comparison, 輸血 is a model of sane compound formation.

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - IceCream - 2011-05-26

and yet, "i bought a brand new loaf of bread from the supermarket" is pretty much never going to be said. "brand new shoes" "brand new car" etc are quite common though. For most things, "brand new" has more of a ぴかぴか feel to me, though yeah, Yudans sentence also sounds totally normal...

it's not a big deal though, you can stretch english whatever way you please in this case. It's not wrong as such to use "brand new" in a different way, just more or less common or more or less creative. "brand new day" "brand new baby" etc.

@zigmonty: lol!
honestly, i don't really know. i think the older generation of people are the main people who still use "Japs" and it generally comes with some form of racist attitudes because of the war, so that's the connotations it gives if someone else uses it. But if nobodys getting offended where you are it's probably not such a big deal, i dunno...

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - fakewookie - 2011-05-26

zigmonty Wrote:
damicore Wrote:
Quote:Took ages before i stopped mistaking 来日 for a word meaning "tomorrow" along the pattern of 来月 and 来年.
Anyways, 来　and 毎　are kanji preffixes so it's a little easier.
Err my point is that 来日 is a misuse of a common prefix to mean something totally different (well, i suppose it means "coming" in everything). They really could have picked a better one character abbreviation for Japan than 日. It causes a bunch of stupid words like 日中 meaning Japan-China as in 日中関係 (Japan-China Relations).

I guessed 渡米 correctly when i saw it in your post (hadn't seen it before). What's so funny about transiting to America? You know 米 means America in tons of words right?

So you've never come across 来店,　来場,　来園, or any of the other multitude of words which use 来 in the same way?

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - IceCream - 2011-05-26

渡日 is a word as well, so 渡米 isn't that surprising...

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - zigmonty - 2011-05-26

fakewookie Wrote:
zigmonty Wrote:
damicore Wrote:Anyways, 来　and 毎　are kanji preffixes so it's a little easier.
Err my point is that 来日 is a misuse of a common prefix to mean something totally different (well, i suppose it means "coming" in everything). They really could have picked a better one character abbreviation for Japan than 日. It causes a bunch of stupid words like 日中 meaning Japan-China as in 日中関係 (Japan-China Relations).

I guessed 渡米 correctly when i saw it in your post (hadn't seen it before). What's so funny about transiting to America? You know 米 means America in tons of words right?
So you've never come across 来店,　来場,　来園, or any of the other multitude of words which use 来 in the same way?

Nope, i haven't. To be fair, 来日 is marked as (P) in rikaichan, your examples aren't. Does anyone actually use them?

Sigh... apparently i'm the only one who was surprised 来日 wasn't an extension of the series 来年、来月... You know, because patterns involving 年,月,日 are really common. 店,場,園 aren't overloaded in the same way.

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - arch9443 - 2011-05-26

zigmonty Wrote:
fakewookie Wrote:
zigmonty Wrote:Err my point is that 来日 is a misuse of a common prefix to mean something totally different (well, i suppose it means "coming" in everything). They really could have picked a better one character abbreviation for Japan than 日. It causes a bunch of stupid words like 日中 meaning Japan-China as in 日中関係 (Japan-China Relations).

I guessed 渡米 correctly when i saw it in your post (hadn't seen it before). What's so funny about transiting to America? You know 米 means America in tons of words right?
So you've never come across 来店,　来場,　来園, or any of the other multitude of words which use 来 in the same way?
Nope, i haven't. To be fair, 来日 is marked as (P) in rikaichan, your examples aren't. Does anyone actually use them?

Sigh... apparently i'm the only one who was surprised 来日 wasn't an extension of the series 来年、来月... You know, because patterns involving 年,月,日 are really common. 店,場,園 aren't overloaded in the same way.

昨日　今日　明日
先月　今月　来月
去年　今年　来年

The patterns are definitely similar, but they have plenty of variation. 来日 caught me off guard, but more in the sense that I already knew 明日 was usually used. So I was confused. And then I found out what it actually meant. I don't really see 来 as the confusing part. but more so the use of 日 as an abbreviation for 日本 as the cause of the confusion. 来日 could easily be interpreted as the coming day, or coming to Japan. Making it confusing to a learner, and it really threw me off, because I didn't know 日 was used like that at the time.

来店, 来園, and 来場 don't have nearly as much wiggle room as 来日 does. So they are pretty obvious. That's how it is to me anyway.

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - Jarvik7 - 2011-05-26

来日 can also mean coming day, but it's read らいじつ.

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - JimmySeal - 2011-05-26

zigmonty Wrote:Fair enough... when we say offensive, are we talking of the level of Pom or Yank, or are we talking really bad?

I think about the same level as sp*c or k*ke, but not quite as bad as n****r, but that's just my impression of it.

zigmonty Wrote:Nope, i haven't. To be fair, 来日 is marked as (P) in rikaichan, your examples aren't. Does anyone actually use them?

来店 is only used about every 30 seconds on every supermarket PA in Japan. I think it's bizzare to call 来日 a "misuse" of 来. Are you entirely sure 来日 wasn't coined before 来週, 来月, 来年?

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - yudantaiteki - 2011-05-26

I'm pretty sure it wasn't; the 日本国語大辞典 has a 12th-century citation for 来月 (read as ライクヮツ). 来日 only has 20th century citations although the Daijiten doesn't always give the earliest citation for any word. (It sounds like a 20th-century newspaper coinage to me, but I can't say that for certain).

来日 as らいじつ seems to be older than 来日（らいにち） but all the Daijiten quotes are classical Chinese or dictionaries so it's hard to tell how it might have been used, or even if that's how they would have read the sequence at the time (rather than as きたるひ)

But it's still wrong to call 来日 a "misuse" of 来 since "come" is a basic meaning of that kanji.

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - JimmySeal - 2011-05-26

yudantaiteki Wrote:I'm pretty sure it wasn't; the 日本国語大辞典 has a 12th-century citation for 来月 (read as ライクヮツ). 来日 only has 20th century citations although the Daijiten doesn't always give the earliest citation for any word. (It sounds like a 20th-century newspaper coinage to me, but I can't say that for certain).

Well, I guess if 来月 was around for 800 years and they still weren't using 来日 for "tomorrow", I'd say the compound was up for grabs for whatever they wanted to do with it. :-)

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - yudantaiteki - 2011-05-26

I meant 来日（らいにち） only had 20th century citations; 来日（らいじつ） goes back to the 12th.

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - zigmonty - 2011-05-27

Well, i did mention that i found it confusing specifically because it's a combination of a common prefix 来 with 日, which is a part of a group of kanji that pair with 来 to mean next X. I agree that it's the use of 日 to mean japan that is really at fault.

I'm not sure what the age of the compound has to do with anything. By misuse, i didn't mean someone was abusing their term-coining rights, i just meant that it's a combo breaker when learning the language in the order that JSL learners typically follow. You're all readying waaay too much into what i said lol.

It is worth mentioning that i've been to a supermarket in Japan maybe twice... Tongue

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - mezbup - 2011-05-27

looks like English still has some tricks up its sleeve.

http://www.savethewords.org/

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - daaan - 2011-05-27

zigmonty Wrote:Well, i did mention that i found it confusing specifically because it's a combination of a common prefix 来 with 日, which is a part of a group of kanji that pair with 来 to mean next X. I agree that it's the use of 日 to mean japan that is really at fault.

Disclaimer: I'm still a complete beginner. But as far as I know, there are other words were 日 is used in a similar way, like 在日. So if you think of 来X as 'coming X' it does make sense: 来月 'coming month', 来日 'coming [to] Japan' etc. Right?

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - kainzero - 2011-05-27

aphasiac Wrote:Yet a "brand new loaf of bread" is completely wrong. Seriously, English must be hell to learn..

I thought that "fresh" was for something more organic and "brand new" was something manufactured.

Still, 新しいパン seems odd to me.

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - pudding cat - 2011-05-27

kainzero Wrote:
aphasiac Wrote:Yet a "brand new loaf of bread" is completely wrong. Seriously, English must be hell to learn..
I thought that "fresh" was for something more organic and "brand new" was something manufactured.

Still, 新しいパン seems odd to me.

You can use 焼きたてパン.

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - kainzero - 2011-05-27

pudding cat Wrote:You can use 焼きたてパン.

So I guess English isn't any different then, right? =)

Can I use Yakitate Japan?
馬い！

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - damicore - 2011-05-27

Hey i'm a sp*c haha and we have a word for "jap" which is "ponja" (we call japan ja-pón, so pon-ja is japon backwards). At least here in Buenos Aires where many people are descendants from European people we have a lot of slangs to call them, and they're quite often used in a friendly nuance:
"tano" for italians (and I'm actually an Italian descendant).
"turco" (from turquish) for many people who are anything but turquish.
"gringo" for north americans, canadians, british, etc.
etc, etc, etc.
Here those words aren't really demeaning in any way, I wouldn't use "ponja" to refer to my japanese teacher though haha.
I'm sorry if I offended anybody, it was never the intention, but we need to have an abbreviation for "japanese people", way too long haha.

Am I the only one who thinks japanese has a brutal ammount of vocab.? - yudantaiteki - 2011-05-27

I didn't think you intentionally offended; that's why I pointed it out to you -- I saw your country was Argentina and I thought you just might not know the word is considered offensive in some places. You can just use "Japanese" instead of "Japanese people".