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Re: Japanese (was an ol Conlang Post: "Borrowing Words")

From:Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
Date:Tuesday, December 23, 2003, 5:25
In a message dated 2003:09:27 03:19:59 PM, christophe.grandsire@FREE.FR
writes:

>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).
And some of the Japanese terms are rather nicer than their English originals; for instance, "wapuro" flows much more trippingly off the tongue than the ungainly compound "word processor", which always calls to my mind the image of letters being dumped into a whirling food processor to be pureed into unintelligibility . . . -Mark

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Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>