The Stories Behind Mysterious Japanese Words
Why is a stapler called a hotchikisu in Japanese and a pencil called a pen?
If you’re learning Japanese, it can sometimes feel like the language consists of English vocabulary put into Japanese pronunciation and grammar.
In fact, the very first Japanese sentence I learned was, “Kore wa pen desu.” — This is a pen. The Japanese word for pen is…pen. The Japanese word for that most Japanese of food — rice — is gohan, or…raisu. Open an engineering or medical textbook and there’s hardly a noun to be found that isn’t taken from English.
Most of the foreign loanwords are taken straight from English, making them easy to understand. Tennis is tenisu, toilet is toire, taxi is takushii, and hotel is hoteru. There are thousands of words like these borrowed wholesale from English. (This song of English in Japanese is a fun way to learn a hundred “Japanese” words in 4 minutes.)
Occasionally, though, there are surprises when a Japanese term that is clearly a loan word doesn’t match the English…
