I'm starting this thread for anyone to post katakana fails. There sure as shit is a lot of them out there.

I'll start it off.

セクハラ = sexual harassment.

FAIL.

Pfft.

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%8A%80%E...D.E5.9B.BD

I don't get what you mean? :S

liosama Wrote:I don't get what you mean? :S

Well some katakana words can be read right off the bat, easy to make out what they mean. Others just fail terribly, either they sound completely stupid, have been ridiculously butchered to sound Japanese or don't even come close.

In the case of セクハラ what they've done is in the typical Japanese fashion taken a compound word and abbreviated the shit out of it. Now this works for kanji for example 入学試験　> 入試
but what they've done here is abbreviated sexual to セク and harassment to ハラ to make セクハラ which is just a total fail IMO.

Katakana is one of my pet peeves with Japanese but it makes me laugh sometimes. So please, post Katakana words that make you laugh, cry, get angry, wanna break things, or tell all your friends.

I don't really consider any of them *fail*, though セクハラ sounds a bit too cute for what it is.
Anyway, I remember アフレコ destroyed my mind at the time, since it was an abbreviation of an English term that doesn't even exist.

ガソリンスタンド = gasoline stand = petrol station.

Just sounds so 1950's by today's standards. Kinda fails hard when its just referred to as スタンド.

@QuackingShoe: I just looked アフレコ up. LOL. It's now blowing my mind. It's a fail imo.

テロップ is a telop.... Katakanification is ok, but has anyone ever even heard the word telop? Even the wiki article mentions the widespread Japanese use of the word.

I'm more bothered by the kanjification of anything and everything that can be. It's sadly ironic, because the average Japanese person really does know a lot of English, it's just pronounced so differently that they can't tell the difference between
プロジェクトマネージャー and Project Manager.

I still don't understand why there are so many business words that are katakana when they have Japanese word for it already.

パトカー　=wth? how did partrol cars become patoka?
ファッキン = lol. Love it!

Draak Wrote:パトカー　=wth? how did partrol cars become patoka?
ファッキン = lol. Love it!

For the same reason First Kitchen became ファッキン

Someone posited on another thread that the words that have a legitimate Japanese version but get kana-ized usually are negative in nature.

Gotta love ファッキン though. Can't get enough of that.

Draak Wrote:パトカー　=wth? how did partrol cars become patoka?
ファッキン = lol. Love it!

I was absolutely astounded at how truncated パトカー was when I learned it. And now i'm in hysterics are learning ファッキン. That's brilliant.

dont forget the computer ウイルス. I was watching TV the other day and actually heard this used. Crackkked up.

I tried to look for japanese blogs, and one hour later found that it was not spelled blog in katakana, but ブロ...

It's the odd one like アンケート that's not from English that really throws me...

pm215 Wrote:It's the odd one like アンケート that's not from English that really throws me...

and コンクール

mezbup Wrote:ガソリンスタンド = gasoline stand = petrol station.

Just sounds so 1950's by today's standards. Kinda fails hard when its just referred to as スタンド.

In the same kind of vein as スタンド, I always thought ホーム, as in, train platform, was funny.

@pm215: Lol アンケート. I remember that confusing me the first couple times I saw it!

mezbup Wrote:Others just fail terribly, either they sound completely stupid, have been ridiculously butchered to sound Japanese or don't even come close.

er, they *are* Japanese...

mezbup Wrote:

pm215 Wrote:It's the odd one like アンケート that's not from English that really throws me...

and コンクール

I know a bit of French so I don't have any problems with those, it's the katakana words from Portugal, those drive me crazy.

プリクラ

And yeah, the unnecessary usage of these loanwords wears on me. I'm sick of learning Japanese words only to later find out that more often a katakanized version of an English word is used in its place most of the time.

Also, Japanese people tend to be really smooth at blending Japanese and English. If they want to talk about something above your level, they'll just mix together a bunch of katakanized English words in Japanese basic vocabulary and grammar. Which is really awfully annoying when you're trying to learn Japanese. heh... and by "smooth" above, I mean I can barely even contemplate doing that by mixing in Japanese words with English. But they do it fast, naturally, in the flow of conversation.

In general, I've found these words more of a hurdle than a help in learning Japanese. It's hard to distinguish which words are common use katakana words and which ones are just English words they're katakanizing to make it easier for me to understand them (which is a good reason to avoid English speaking Japanese people if you're wanting to practice your Japanese).

I find that only natural though.

Humans like to do things which involve the least energy, pronouncing long words involves energy, shortening words, compression etc thus are only natural consequences of being human.

I find セクハラ, アルパー (Aluminum Paper) and whatever the hell else exists out there all ingenious. Though it took the Japanese guy a while to tell me what アルパー was without me having heard of it before. Also, I knew セクハラ first, before I learnt what パワ・ハラ was. When I heard it I knew it was "power harassment". There is a systemization to it all I believe.

and Capital, yeah
there are a few studies that show Japanese English learners who have an extensive knowledge of gairaigo are far more advantageous than ones who don't have so much. But you are right there is a huge lacking on the teaching side as they don't exploit this massive (english) lexicon in Japanese.

グランプリ = grand prize. Sounds so much more like gran prix.

Interestingly enough, I looked at the word frequency lists on the Jxtended 1.15 plugin and there was something like high, good, fair, low, lowest. High and good had pretty much no katakana, fair was nearly FILLED with it.

mezbup Wrote:グランプリ = grand prize. Sounds so much more like gran prix.

Interestingly enough, I looked at the word frequency lists on the Jxtended 1.15 plugin and there was something like high, good, fair, low, lowest. High and good had pretty much no katakana, fair was nearly FILLED with it.

That does mean grand prix, not grand prize.

Grand Prix is French for grand prize, so it makes no difference.

I'm learning a lot from this thread

I know i'm going to see some of these terms and go aha, I know this one already!

ダース = dozen = fail