The other day my daughter sent me a funny graphic titled The Internet Taught me Japanese that listed some ridiculous Japanese/English word puns, combining words that mean the same thing. The list included these gems:
- konnichiwassup?
- gomenasorry!
- nani the f*ck?
- chotto a minute
- tadai’m home
- subaramazing!
- daijouokay?
- yamete kudastop
- eatadakimasu
- seeyanara
- oyasleepnasai
At first, I groaned at the terrible Japanese puns, which sound like something you’d hear from a 14-year-old fan at his first anime convention, but then I found myself smiling at the cleverness of some of them. Our readers on Twitter and Facebook seemed to agree they weren’t entirely kush*t.
Linguistically speaking, combined words like these are called portmanteaus (a word coined by Lewis Carroll), and we all use them every day when we use words like sitcom, brunch, guesstimate, flexitarian, bromance, cosplay, Abenomics, Famicom, Pokémon, and, er, twincest. They’re used in all languages for convenience.
When my kids were born, my wife and I knew we wanted to raise them to be bilingual, so they’d feel connected to both the U.S. and Japan and didn’t have to put in the hard work we had both done, so I came up with many strategies to make it a reality. There’s nothing as creative as a brain that’s testing the boundaries of a new language, and when my kids were still small and separating English and Japanese in their heads, they came up with many mixed English/Japanese words, like toni-way, a combination of tonikaku (meaning “anyway”) and the same English word. Another time when my wife and I were studying Spanish, she accidentally coined the word omoshirosante (from omoshiroi, “interesting” and interesante). Both words have become standard language within our family.
What do you think about these Japanese word puns? Are they subaramazing or should we go urushut up? Tell us on Twitter!
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