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Japanese contractions of English phrases

created by califunky

(idea) by califunky (3.6 y) (print)   ?   (I like it!) Tue Dec 10 2002 at 21:52:22

The Japanese have a habit of taking common phrases (normally consumer goods) and reducing them to a single contracted word. This usually occurs for items that are reduced to acronyms for American speakers of English.

The most notable examples of this phenomena are terebi for TV (the Japanese often have pronunciation problems with L/R and B/V), persocon for PC and aircon for AC. Pronunication of these contractions often results in puhsocon, aihcon, etc.

This does not always occur for items with acronyms, other examples include combini for convenience store, digicam for digital camera and remocon for remote control.

There are probably many more examples that I do not know, as my experience in Japan is limited.

Update: IanOji has brought it to my attention that this habit arises due to the lack of "letters" at the beginning of their words. This practice occurs with Japanese phrases as well. The current favorite of other such combinations that have been brought to my attention is sekuhara for sexual harrassment.

Thanks also to mfk and Zaf.


printable version
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