Anglicisms in Japanese?

[mike_garcia1]

Howdy, just ran into another example of something that ( coincidentally? ) sounds almost exactly like an english expression:

[center]ドンマイ don’t mind, ---- also O.K.[/center]

Is this particular case a coincidence? i couldn't draw any parallels from kanji examples of the words in the phrase, as i'm not proficient enough yet...

consequently, i would like to raise the question as to whether or not there are a lot of anglicisms invading the japanese language as a whole. Just curious.

If there are many such cases ( meaning there are a lot of anglicisms frequenting modern japanese ) it would perhaps be interesting to ask a native speaker to compile a list of such said anglicisms...(?)

i'm really new here and just started to learn japanese, so please don't dog me if this has been posted elsewhere or if it seems ( especially to those of you who ARE Japanese or living in Japan ) somewhat ridiculous...

i'm living in Germany, and there have been increasing discussions concerning the massive influx of english in almost all european languages...

thx mike

[chikara]

mike_garcia1 wrote:
.... i would like to raise the question as to whether or not there are a lot of anglicisms invading the japanese language as a whole....

Yes.

バイバイ

[keatonatron]

mike_garcia1 wrote:
[center]ドンマイ don’t mind, ---- also O.K.[/center]

Is this particular case a coincidence?

Not at all. ドンマイ is indeed an abbreviation of ドント・マインド.

mike_garcia1 wrote:
If there are many such cases ( meaning there are a lot of anglicisms frequenting modern japanese ) it would perhaps be interesting to ask a native speaker to compile a list of such said anglicisms...(?)

There are tons. It's hard to simply "make a list".

It's extremely common for Japanese people to take a two-word English expression, cut it down to the first two hiragana of each word, and use it as an everyday expression.

For example, パーャiル・コンピューター became パャRン, エンジン・ストップ became エンスト, and セクシュアル・ハラスメント became セクハラ.

[Wakannai]

actually, the first two mora thing is the standard Japanese way to abbreviate any expression, not just foreign ones.

[AJBryant]

I remember when the big buzzword around offices in 1991 was the problem of セクハラ -- sexual harrassment.


Tony

[two_heads_talking]

I just remember Nintendo coming out with the , Super Famicom (スーパーファミコン) and thinking to myself, that's just going to confuse Americans all day long. Luckily Nintendo renamed it Super Nintendo and all was good.

[mike_garcia1]

Thanks alot for the answers i got, though i must admit thats not going to simplify things in the least...

[chikara]

two_heads_talking wrote:
I just remember Nintendo coming out with the , Super Famicom (スーパーファミコン) and thinking to myself, that's just going to confuse Americans all day long.....

Can you please explain why that would confusing to Americans to an non-American.

[TrashTreasurer]

My guess would be that if people did successfully grasp the fact that "famicom" meant "family computer", convincing them that "SUUPAA FAMEEKON" was to be interpreted would be a whole other creature. Kinda like how the Japanese are supposed to pronounce "Xbox 360" out loud. I'm not sure though, I just wanted to add to the conversation

[two_heads_talking]

chikara wrote:

two_heads_talking wrote:
I just remember Nintendo coming out with the , Super Famicom (スーパーファミコン) and thinking to myself, that's just going to confuse Americans all day long.....

Can you please explain why that would confusing to Americans to an non-American.

To be honest, I can't. It was 17 years ago. I just remember thinking it.