Last chapter I talked about mumbled Japanese and how it is difficult to pick up with an untrained ear. This time I’m going to look at another sticking point for me: katakana loan words.

Katakana Loan Words

When Japanese borrows words from other languages, naturally it changes those words to fit the Japanese sound system. These loanwords, with the exception of those of Chinese origin, are typically written in a special Japanese script called “katakana“. Here are some basic examples for English loanwords:

• hamburger: ハンバーガー (hanbaagaa)
• McDonald’s: マクドナルド (makudonarudo)
• gargoyle: ガーゴイル (gaagoiru)

This changing of sounds isn’t unusual. We do it in English too. I don’t know about British English or Australian English or Singaporean English, but when we pronounce the word “samurai” in American English we pronounce the ‘a’, ‘u’ and ‘r’ completely differently from the original Japanese. Japanese taifuu (台風) mysteriously gets an ‘n’ to become “typhoon” [edit: actually, 'typhoon' doesn't come to English from Japanese.  Thanks toad!]. Even “ninja” gets its “i” sound shortened. Come to think of it, I don’t think many people pronounce the ‘ts’ in “tsunami” either.

Back on track, sometimes Japanese will shorten long loan words to make them easier to say:

• personal computer: パーソナル・コンピューター (paasonaru konpyuutaa) becomes パソコン (pasokon)
• convenience store: コンビニエンス・ストア (konbiniensu sutoa) becomes コンビニ (konbini)

These shortened loanwords can be tricky to pick up by ear the first time you hear them, but they aren’t that big a deal.

For most English-speaking learners of Japanese, English loanwords are easy to spot in conversations. They sound like a Japanese person saying an English word. We hear that all the time when we watch Heroes. It gets complicated with names though.

Foreign Names Are Hard To Catch

I can’t speak for everybody, but for me foreign names are really hard to pick out of a Japanese conversation. I don’t mean common names like “Thomas” or “Patrick” or even “Tyler Durden”. Those are easy. I mean the kind of names you get when you’re talking about a “Johannshamnh sofa with the Strinne green strip pattern” or “Rislampa wire lamps made out of environmentally-friendly unbleached paper”.

Fight Club Chapter 4

In the fourth chapter of Fight Club, the main character Jack orders furniture from an Ikea catalogue. Boy was this scene a nightmare to transcribe. I had to cheat and bust out the English script before I even realized that the words tripping me up were loanwords. I wasted a lot of time searching my dictionary for some word or words that sounded like “ohamashabu” (おはましゃぶ). It turns out that this is how “Johannshamnh” is pronounced in Japanese.

クリプスクのパーソナル・オフィス・セット、 オベトレックの健康自転車、 ストリンがデザインした緑の縞柄のオハマシャブのソファ。 [sound file]

kuripusuku no paasonaru ofisu setto, obetorekku no kenkou jitensha, sutorin ga dezain shita midori no shimagara no ohamashabu no sofa.

Orig: The Klipske personal office unit, the Hovertrekke home exer-bike. Or the Johannshamnh sofa with the Strinne green stripe pattern.

Oops! I don’t even know how to pronounce that in English. :)

Sometimes it is easy to recognize a foreign word when you hear it. There are certain combinations of sounds that just don’t occur in Japanese, ever. Unfortunately for me, “ohamashabu” sounded like it could be a Japanese word, so I got stuck. I don’t know if I would have figured it out without the English script.

Demanding Medicine

In the last half of the chapter, Jack is talking to a doctor about his sleeping problem. One cool word I learned was the word for “narcolepsy”. Here’s the line:

じゃ。睡眠発作じゃないかな。　　たまに起きたら、とんでもないところにいるんです。 どうやってそこに行ったかわからない。 [sound file]

ja. suimin hossa ja nai kana. tama ni okitara tondemonai tokoro ni irun desu. douyatte soko ni itta ka wakaranai.

Orig: What about narcolepsy? I nod off, I wake up in strange places, I have no idea how I got there.

睡眠 (suimin) means “sleep” or “sleeping”. 発作 (hossa) is a medical term that means “attack”, “fit” or “seizure”. So “narcolepsy” in Japanese is “sleep attack” or “sleeping fit”. Sweet.

The doctor tells Jack to relax and Jack begs for a prescription. In the original English, his pleading sounds pathetic and sad. In the Japanese, it sounds a little rude to me, even though the language is polite. Too direct maybe? I can’t imagine ever saying these words to a doctor in Japan. I’d use a much softer sentence form.

先生、睡眠薬を出して下さい。 [sound file]

sensei, suiminyaku o dashite kudasai.

Lit: Doctor, hand over some sleeping pills, please.

We get the word 睡眠 (suimin – sleep/sleeping) again, this time combined with ～薬 (yaku – medicine) to get “sleeping pills”. That’s an antonym for “two-month-old son”. Trust me.

That’s all folks! Stay tuned for Chapter 5. If you are so inclined, try subscribing to the RSS Feed.

Topics for next time:

1. Support goups.
2. Addiction.
3. Sleeping like a baby.

Chapter 4 Total Running Time: 1m 35s
Chapter 4 New Words: 27
Project Mayhem Total Running Time: 6m 20s
Project Mayhem Total New Words: 84

Previous Project Mayhem posts:

• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3

Related posts:

1. Chapter 5 – Japanese Giants
2. Chapter 3 – Japanese Men Mumble
3. Chapter 2: How to Say Testicular Cancer in Japanese
4. Learn Swedish With Online Swedish Radio
5. Project Mayhem – Learning a Foreign Language Through Movies

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