Comments on: Lost in Translation

By: karen

karen — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 11:46:36 +0000

That would be odd indeed. The loan word probably came in from the term “breast stroke”. There are many sporting terms in the Japanese language that have been borrowed from English. I still get amused during the F1 to hear about cars driving “sido by sido”.

By: Norwin

Norwin — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 22:14:30 +0000

So, I’ve been accidentally thinking about this a bit further. From your logic above, the Japanese word for breast was borrowed from English. So does that mean that the Japanese had no word for a breast until they met the English?
That does seem odd…

By: karen

karen — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:29:14 +0000

It would certainly raise a few eyebrows

By: Norwin

Norwin — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:19:06 +0000

I will have to suggest this the next time someone points out that brainstorming is not politically correct, and should not be used. Though a “breast conversation” may not be politically correct either.

By: karen

karen — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 01:51:52 +0000

I have never thought to use wikipedia to find this sort of Japanese word. The only time I have used it is to find words for cooking ingredients. For these I knew the English word, found them in Wikipedia and clicked onto the Japanese page. I’ll have to make more use of it.

By: Tatsuhiko Miyagawa

Tatsuhiko Miyagawa — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:22:30 +0000

I think a paper dictionary doesn’t work for these types of newly created words — Web resources such as wikipedia works best