Re: Borrowing Words

En réponse à J Y S Czhang :


>     ::looks around for Christophe::
Here! ;)))

>     One of my favourite Japanese word "mangalings" is _Gundam_ which IIRC
>comes from "gun dream(s)"..._pokemon_ is from "pocket monster(s)"...
>     Manga and anime has lotsa these - IMO especially the sci-fi kind...
>
>     ::looks around for Christophe:: CG probably can tell you peeps more...
This phenomenon is actually quite common in Japanese. It consists in 
simplifying long phrases (creating abbreviations thus) by taking the first 
two morae of each word. With native words and words borrowed from Chinese, 
it usually corresponds to the first kanji of each word, so the result is 
quite similar to our making of abbreviations by keeping only the first 
letter of each word, except that in the case of Japanese it stays 
pronounceable without having to just spell it. The funny part is that 
Japanese people have no problem applying it to words borrowed from English 
or other languages ;))) (and don't mind making slight deformations for 
niceness, as in the "gundam" case).

Another example from anime is "Digimon" for "digital monster(s)". Another 
example from "normal" Japanese is "sanrenkyuu": "a period of three free 
days" made by taking the first kanji of each of the three following words: 
"mikka" (the first kanji of this word is the kanji for "three": "san"): 
"three days", "renzoku": "succession" and "kyuujitsu": "free day". Another 
example is "nichigin": "National Bank of Japan" from "nihon": "Japan" and 
"ginkou": "bank" (the first kanji, which is pronounced simply "ni" in 
"nihon", can also be pronounced "nichi". I suppose it's to make it two 
morae :)) ).

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang. 

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