In the first chapter of Katakana mysteries, I covered a few words whose Japanese meaning has by one path or another become quite different from their English ancestors. This time, I’ve rounded up 7 more words/phrases that are interesting for the opposite reason: their accuracy. You probably wouldn’t have expected these underdogs of English to even become loanwords at all, much less to have survived the Japanese translation gauntlet intact.

1. サウスポー　(sausupo- = southpaw)

You’re probably wondering why I put a shot of Rocky Balboa in the post pic, aren’t you? Well it’s because of this word. Yeah I know the term southpaw came from baseball…

Anyway, just like in English (and perhaps even moreso), this term can describe a person who is left-handed, even outside of a sports context.

2.グッジョブ (gujjobu = good job)

Commonly used in Japanese just the way it is in English, to complement someone on a job well done. The romanization looks strange but this loan word (loan phrase?) actually comes out sounding quite similar to how it would in English. Well, except for the “u” sound at the end, which Japanese can never seem to let go ofu.

3. チーズ (chi-zu = say cheese!)

Have you ever taken a picture together with a Japanese person? They almost invariably use the cue message “hai, chi-zu!” when taking a picture, borrowing the word “cheese” from the original English expression. And yes, this word is used when talking about the edible kind of cheese too in Japanese.

4. カミングアウト (kamingu auto = coming out)

Yes, this word is what you think it is. Coming out, as in… coming out of the closet. And yes it is associated with homosexuality. I’ve never heard it used shortend to just アウト (auto = out) like it says is possible in my dictionary, but Japanese learners should probably be careful.

5. オーライ (o-rai = all right)

Just as in English, you can use this expression to express approval or consent, or to cheer or encourage someone. Again, the pronunciation comes out much better than the romanization of the word leads you to believe. Go watch some Japanese high school students practicing soccer and I guarantee you’ll start to pick up on this phrase really quick.

6. ドンマイ (donmai = don’t mind)

Okay, so maybe this one is a little different than how we’d express ourselves in English. Like o-rai, this phrase is also used commonly in sports. When a teammate makes a mistake, you can say donmai to mean “don’t worry about it” and encourage him/her to keep going.

7. ファイナルアンサー (fainaru ansa- = final answer)

Thanks to the Japanese importation of the Who wants to be a millionaire? quiz show with zero changes to the format, nearly everyone in Japan has become familiar with the phrase “final answer” in the same way that we know it overseas. Sure it’s not the most useful phrase to know, but it’s fun to throw around at parties and other get-togethers.

Japanese "Quiz Millionaire" TV Show

THE NEW VERSION IS HERE

Alright, I so started this blog about a month ago. Posts are starting to build up and I’m starting to feel at home here lately. I decided it was time to start dishing out some real content, otherwise I’m just another ranting Japanophile. So for the last week or so I’ve been hard at work on a top secret project, and now it’s done!

I present to the world The Nihonshock Japanese cheat sheet!

What is it?

First things first: this cheat sheet is intended to be a supplement to your Japanese studies, not a replacement. The information here has been condensed, minimized, abbreviated, and generally beaten to tiny pieces with a sledgehammer in order to get as much as possible onto just two pages. This cheat sheet will be most useful for helping you to recall information after you have already learned it.

That said, even if you haven’t yet learned a lot of the grammar and words appearing on this cheat sheet, you may still find it useful as a road map to new information, and to help give what you have learned some different and perhaps better context.

How to use

Download it, print it (2 pages/1 sheet of paper front and back) and keep it in your notebook, textbook, on your desk or wherever else you need it. You can use it in it’s digital from, but owing to the small text size be prepared for lots of scrolling and zooming.

Information contained

The guide is built into the following sections:

Page 1

• Polite Verb Forms
• Casual Verb Forms
• Neutral Verb Forms
• Conjugating Verbs (RU vs U verbs and the irregular verbs suru and kuru)
• Forms of de aru (the being/equality verb)
• Adjective/Adverb form guide
• Hiragana and Katakana charts
• JLPT Level 4 Kanji Chart

Note: The katakana chart includes an aside detailing four easily confused katakana, with a stroke direction guide.

Page 2

• Core Particles with explanations and example sentences
  • wa, ga, o, ni, to, de, mo, ka, e and ya
• Assisting Particles with explanations and example sentences
  • yori, hodo, kurai, dake, bakari, demo, shika, kara and made
• Common grammar patterns with example sentences
  • hazu, beki, wake, tame, tsumori, dake de naku, no hou ga, wake ni ha ikenai, ~EBA ~U hodo
• Regular and polite verbs of giving and receiving

Example sentences for particles are color coded to help make their parts more readily understandable. Note that the distinction between a “core” particle and an “assisting” particle I have made is not exactly the classification used in Japanese (although it’s close), but I found this grouping to be the most expedient and understandable.

Formatting notes

Paper Size

Because I imagine most people will be printing this, I’ve made two versions: 8.5×11 inch for the USA/Canada and A4 size for basically everywhere else.

Hepburn Romanization

Since this cheat sheet is targeted toward beginner to low-intermediate learners, everything is in romaji (except the katakana/hiragana/kanji charts, of course). I may release a version using the “official” romanization method in the future, but right now I’ve just made everything Hepburn (revised), because I believe it’s better for learning and the way most people will prefer. However, I have romanized long o sounds as ou instead of ō.

Serif Japanese

I’ve used a serif style (MS Mincho) Japanese font for on page 1 for the hiragana, katakana and kanji because it shows stroke direction and type better than sans-serif style (ie. MS Gothic). In this respect they can be considered a better representation of the written form.

I noticed after finishing the cheat sheet that page 2 currently uses sans-serif style Japanese hiragana. It’s a small detail and there’s no problem really, but I will probably make it serif in any future releases even if just for consistency’s sake.

What got left out

Of course I would have loved to put anything and everything on this guide (I certainly tried), but we’re talking about a whole language here, so some arbitrary unnatural selection took place. Here are some things I considered but which didn’t make the cut:

• Sentence ending particles: yo, ne, tte ba, etc.
• Some assisting Particles: sae, sura, tomo, koso
• Some verb forms: ~TE+shimau, ~E as a command
• Transitions and Conjunctions: dakara, shikashi, keredomo, tokoro de, etc.
• Honorific and Humble forms (keigo)

The particle の (no)

Yeah…. about that…..
well….. you see…..
umm…..
I kinda….
…forgot about it. (^_^; )

I’ll be sure to put it in future versions, because it’s one of the basic particles.

However, it’s also just about the easiest and most straightforward particle there is in Japanese, so its absence doesn’t really impact the overall usefulness of the cheat sheet.

Feedback

This cheat sheet will be an ongoing and evolving project for nihonshock. Although I’m confident even with the first release that this is already the best Japanese language cheat sheet on the internet, I realize it is not and probably will not ever be perfect.

So if anyone notices any mistakes, typos, inconsistencies, anything I may have forgotten, or anything that could be done better, please contact me or leave a comment and help to make this cheat sheet even better!

Compliments are also appreciated!

But I doubt as many have heard of Silver Week! But there’s a good reason you may not have heard of it though: this year is the first Silver Week ever.

Silver skies on Citizen's Rest Day, the view from my apartment.

The holidays

Saturday, August 19 : A day off for some.

Sunday, August 20 : A day off for more.

Monday, August 21 : Respect for the Aged Day (敬老の日). This holiday comes every year on the 3rd Monday of August. However, prior to 2003 it was always on August 15th.

Tuesday, August 22 : Citizen’s Day of Rest (国民の休日). Not technically a “holiday”, but according to the Japanese specifications for holidays, a “Citizen’s Day of Rest” is to occur to fill a gap between two holidays that are separated by only one regular working day. But you don’t need to strain yourself over the details… the next such case isn’t for 6 more years. However, you should know that this Citizen’s Rest Day was originally created in 1986 to ensure that the Japanese would have an unbroken holidays for Golden Week, regardless of what days the holidays happened to fall on. In 2007 however, the government designated May 4th as Greenery Day, making the Citizen’s Day of Rest no longer necessary for this purpose.

Wednesday, August 23 : Autumnal Equinox (秋分の日）. Either August 22 or 23 every year.

The name

Decided based on the results of a televised poll in November of 2008, Silver Week (シルバーウィーク) is more than just a call-back to Golden Week. In Japanese, silver refers to the elderly, making silver week an appropriate label for a string of holidays in which the most important one is Respect for the Aged Day.

Just as a quick language digression… It’s commonly thought that the word silver came to be associated with the elderly as a reference to how hair becomes gray when one becomes older, but the actual origin of the usage apparently came from silver seats (シルバーシート), which was the old name for priority seating for elderly and disabled individuals on trains (Source: Wikipedia Disambiguation for シルバー, Japanese). The term silver seat fell out of use in the early 1990s when the trains began using the term 優先席 (ゆうせんせき) (literally: priority seat) in an effort to make the seats more open to pregnant women and injured people (by that time silver had already come to be associated with being old).

How to celebrate

Well, doing something nice for your grandmother and grandfather might be a good idea. Here’s one more good (?) idea.

Recently Released, Pokemon "Soul Silver" for Nintendo DS

Don’t get used to it

Because Silver Week requires the 3rd Monday of August and the Autumnal Equinox to land just exactly right, the next one won’t be until 2015.

As an idea of how to spur the economy, the LDP was considering designating an early November long-holiday similar to Golden Week that might have included Health and Sports Day, Culture Day and Labor Thanksgiving Day, but since the LDP recently lost power to the Democratic Party, this plan’s future has become highly uncertain, and because Silver Week is already pretty well linked to Respect for the Aged Day, it’s unlikely that this new string of holidays would be referred to by the same name anyway.

From a native English-speaker’s perspective, the majority of these katakana-rendered importations of foreign words (mostly English words) are sufficiently accurate and helpful for daily life in Japan… well, if you can remember where to put the “ー”

However, the sheer mind-boggling number of these words has inevitably ensured that some glitches and defects made it past quality control. Some words don’t work the way they should. Some don’t work at all. Some have unintended side effects.

Katakana mysteries will be a several part series (I don’t know how many parts yet… at least 3) on Nihonshock focusing on some curious loan words that you’ll encounter in Japan. While certainly this will be useful information for Japanese learners, hopefully you won’t have to know any Japanese to enjoy the read.

And so, without further ado…

Loan words Japan got wrong

or…  “Can we have them back now, please?”

1. バイキング (baikingu = viking)

The villain responsible for this well known misimportation is the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. In 1958, the manager of the hotel, Tetsuzo Inumaru, decided to open a self-serve, all-you-can-eat style restaurant modeled on a Swiss Swedish Smorgasbord.

However, there was a problem: the Swiss Swedish word “smorgasbord”(スモーガスボード) was deemed too long and difficult to pronounce. So the employees of the hotel were polled for name suggestions.

Meanwhile, the Hibiya theater next to the hotel was showing the movie “The Vikings”, so one employee suggested to use “viking” as a name for the restaurant style, based on a scene in the movie which depicted a grand feast, and the fact that a “viking” was easily associated with Europe.

The Imperial Hotel took the suggestion, the restaurant turned out to be a huge success and the name stuck.

Notes:

• ビュッフェ (byuffe) is the katakana representation of the French word buffet, but this word is infrequently used. When it is used, it typically refers to on-train cafeterias.
• 食べ放題  (tabehoudai) means all-you-can-eat, but usage of this word is typically limited to sushi, yakiniku, crab, and shabushabu quisine.
• A “Viking” is always self-serve, but “tabehoudai” may or may not be (most often it isn’t).
• Only in Okinawa, where there is a large US military presence, has the word バフェ (bafe: buffet) taken hold.

Source:  Japanese Wikipedia (食べ放題)

2. マンション (manshon = mansion)

Bill Gates or Warren Buffet might be very surprised if they were to buy a Japanese manshon, only to find upon their arrival something a bit less grand than they envisioned, and that they would be sharing it with quite a few other people.

Oh well, at least they can take refuge on their luxurious new Japanese yacht… oh, wait a minute…

A Japanese yacht (ヨット: yotto)

On a side note, a “pension” ペンション (penshon) is a guest house.

3. キャッチコピー (kyacchi kopi- = catch copy)

I guess they were trying to say “catch phrase”, although I really don’t know how the word “copy” made it’s way into this loanword. A “Catch copy” is a phrase that accompanies a brand or product to increase its memorability and appeal. In English, we could also say buzzword or slogan.

The best "catch copy" ... Ever.

4. ナイーブ (nai-bu = naive)

Native speakers of English certainly wouldn’t like waking up and being told that they have a naive personality, but in Japan it’s not such a bad thing. That’s because in Japan, a person with a naive personality is sensitive, delicate, gentle, simple, and honest, just like the girl on the cover of this comic.

Naive, a manga for girls (uses an alternate katakana rendering)

I bet she uses gentle “naive” body soap for her sensitive skin, because she’s so gentle and sensitive, you see.

Naive: a brand of Japanese hygeine products

5. スマート (suma-to = smart)

Since “smart” is a relatively simple English word and most Japanese have studied English through 6 years of middle and high school, there is a certain level of understanding that this word means “intelligent”. However, this word in Japanese has somehow come to also mean “slim” and “elegant”.

There’s even a fashion magazine called “smart”.

smart: a Japanese fashion magazine

6. スナック (sunakku = snack)

The lack of windows, saucy katakana shop names and smell of sake should clue you in that this isn’t your regular bag of potato chips. The Japanese idea of a “snack” is a social bar, with a somewhat classy atmosphere, basically a place where office workers (guys) go at night to relax, buy expensive drinks and chitchat with some perky young ladies. Foreigners, you are warned.

In Japanese, these kind of words are known as 和製英語 (waseieigo) or, “Japanese-made English”. If you can read Japanese, here are three great links for you to check out.

• 和製英語 index by JES Corporation
• 和製英語 on Japanese Wikipedia
• A good collection of 和製英語 with easy explanations

As I said at the start, katakana mysteries will be a series, so check back for more. The next entry will likely focus on loan words with tricky pronunciations.