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Excerpt from Japanese Street Slang Ai: love.
Ai is not a word to be taken lightly. It corresponds to the luminous Greek term agape—spiritual love as opposed to eros, or sexual love, which is koi in Japanese. The word ai was imported from China by way of Korea during the Asuka period (538–710) by migrant Chinese and Koreans who brought with them the first written characters to Japan. (The same character is used in Chinese, pronounced ai in Mandarin, and in Korean, pronounced ae). Ancient and distinguished as ai is, it turns up in all walks of Japanese life, especially in its verb form ai suru, "to love." Ai shite'ru yo! A cautious Japanese will try to avoid ai if possible, as the very force that renders it so compelling can backfire, making the speaker sound too pushy or too desperate. So, for safer casual chats about love, suki, "like," and daisuki, "really like," often prove to be more prudent choices. Baka: idiot.
This is the most popular Japanese swear word. Everyone and everything can look, sound, or be baka. In Tokyo it has lost much of its original potency, as "damn" or "shit" have in America. Outside Tokyo, however, it often still carries its pristine meaning, so be careful, especially in Osaka, where it really means "imbecile" or "mentally deficient." Baka jan! Over the centuries, baka has been written with many different characters. One of the more interesting compounds uses the two characters ba, "horse," and ka, "deer," legend having it a foolish king of the ancient Chinese Qin dynasty, upon seeing a deer, fatuously said ba instead of ka, and thus was the first to have earned himself the nickname baka. Imo: hick.
For generations imo, the potato, has been a symbol of the hick in Japan. Any Japanese not born or at least raised in Tokyo or in another of the metropolises could qualify in urban slang as an imo. In the past decade the potato, in its scorn of out-of-towners, has acquired new dimensions. Gee! Ano imo suge kakkö shite'ru! Wanpatan: boring.
Wanpatan (with the stress on the first and last a) belongs to the growing body of "made in Japan" English expressions. These fashionable words are known as waseigo, "Japan-made-language," and they are created when Western words or phrases, usually English, are modified, redefined, and then absorbed into everyday speech. Wanpatan is the Japanese pronunciation of "one pattern," which is, from a logical standpoint, the perfect synonym for "boring." In modern Japanese, parties, people, books, food, or anything can be labeled wanpatan. Kare-ra no patii wa itsumo wanpatan da yo! Zurakare! In Tokyo schoolyards, witty youngsters have engendered the zaniest analogies for the word "boring" that the Japanese language can boast. The basis of these clever neologisms is the semantic reinterpretation of wanpatan, which these creative youngsters dissolved into wan, "woof," as in "bark," and patan, "bang." The resulting expression is the hilarious koketa inu, "the stumbling dog." (When the poor animal stumbles, one is likely to hear a woof followed by a bang). Kyo no miitingu mata koketa inu! Another droll synonym for "boring" that sprang from the "woof-bang" school is inu no soto, "the dog outside," the concept here being that the dog went "woof," the door went "bang," and —Wan!! Patan!!—the dog was shut out. Atashi yoku ano disuko ni itte'ta kedo, ima mo inu no soto da mon ne! |
