Sho Fukamachi Online

While reading this article about Warner’s shift to Blu-Ray (basically ending the “format war” – good!) I was struck by some strange words and phrases. I initially thought it was bad edits – but it’s been up over 24 hours and no-one else has mentioned anything.

Am I out of touch or something? Check out this language:

Warner made the decision heading into the annual Consumer Electronics Show confab in Las Vegas, where it had been skedded to participate in activities promoting the rival HD DVD format on Sunday evening.

Scheduled?

“The price impediment was going away, but the take up wasn’t increasing that much,” said Warner Home Entertainment topper Kevin Tsujihara.

Topper?! Does that mean boss or something? It’s longer!

During this point, homevid topper Ron Sanders talked openly of the need to move beyond the format war and convince consumers of the benefits of high-def.

Homevid Topper? Home video boss or something? “homevid” is mentioned a couple more times as well, in lower case like it’s a normal word.

Warner’s decision to back Blu-ray exclusively reps its third shift in high-def strategy.

Short for “represents”, I guess?

I know that sometimes reporters write in shorthand, and presumably the examples here are just bad subediting, but the “casual” way these weird expressions lurked in the text gave me a weird, A Clockwork Orange sense of disconnect. Or maybe an American, especially a teenager, would read that and not notice anything odd?

Ever changing world!

I have somehow got the impression that the word “start” can have another meaning besides its most common, ie. to begin. The definition I have in mind, from multiple books (OK, two that I can remember), is an adjective meaning custom, bespoke, made from scratch – a “start engineering solution” or a “start design job”.

I can’t find any corroborating definitions online or in my computer’s built-in dictionary. Does anyone agree with me, or did I pull this out of thin air? Wouldn’t be the first time my internal English database has gotten itself into an inconsistent state.

Suggestions please, O worthy readers, though do look first before casting thy stones.

When referring to the Japanese people, collectively, in conversation, I rapidly tire of using the word “japanese”. One, it’s ambiguous – it could refer to either the language or the people themselves, which often ends in having to suffix the word with one of those nouns. Two, it’s too long – three syllables, one of them double-length and complex – “eeze” – for a total of four “pronunciation units”. It gets old quickly.

So I find myself often just saying “japs”. It’s not meant as any kind of racial epithet – it’s a simple abbreviation. The word has no other connotations for me at all; it’s a linguistic shortcut, an expedient, a nickname, like referring to McDonalds as “M” or Diet Coke as “DC”.

But every now and again I get told that I’m racist for using that word. It’s true that there is a historical wartime association with it; a few seconds on google will unearth any number of WWII-era propaganda posters about the US imperative of fighting the “Dirty Japs” until one’s dying breath. So, I concede – while not “racist” in my eyes, the word does have a taint, and is probably best avoided, at least in public.

But what is the alternative? Don’t say, “just say the full word!” .. let’s take it as a given that I’m not going to do that. So here’s my challenge to all those who might take affront at my jap-slinging – what would YOU like to hear, instead?

An obvious alternative is “Nips”, short for “Nipponese” – a weird bastard word, using both the formal Japanese name for their country, Nippon, and an awkwardly affixed “-ese” to render the word, in English, descriptive of its inhabitants.

But I don’t like that word, for 3 reasons. One, the word “Nipponese” annoys me. It’s a silly word – it claims to be more “correct” than “Japanese”, but it’s not correct. If you wanted to be correct, you’d say Nihonjin. Nipponese is a non-word, at once harder to say, more pretentious, and yet just as incorrect as its more common competitor.

Two, the word “Nipponese” and especially its shortened form “Nips” has far stronger wartime connotation for me. It’s strongly reminiscent of the asian war in the 1940s, and the two words are primarily used by the generally ungrateful recipients of Japanese attention during that period.

Three, the word “Nips” is ambiguous in western conversation as its meaning has been smeared to include all asians, especially those of whom one does not approve. So, “Nips” is right out.

So what’s left? Suggestions are welcome. The word must be at maximum two syllables, easy to pronounce, and suitable for polite conversation. I certainly can’t think of anything.

So in the absence of any established, uncontroversial nickname, and in the spirit of Australian laziness, I think I’ll just make my own. Unfortunately the traditional Aussie way of constructing a nickname – adding “-za!!” to the end of the first syllable of a noun – is unavailing in this instance – I don’t like the sound of “Jazza!” very much. An alternative, adding “-bbo” or “-ppo” provides a more appealing but not yet ideal option – Jappos! But I wonder if even that word could provoke misunderstanding and resentment. To me, it actually sounds faintly european. I don’t like it much.

Perhaps an acronym? Usually, this is my preferred nickname format, possessing all the desirable traits of uniqueness, leetness, indecipherability to unknowing third parties, and conformance to a technical tradition of jargonistic unix-style ultra-pithiness.

So, I’m going with acronymisation. The third-level domain of Japan is .jp, an ideal candidate – unambigously referring to Japan by sound and construction. I like the internet connotation and indeed I often refer to the country of Japan in IM dialect as JP, as in “I’m going to AU for a month then back to JP”. However, I feel it can be repurposed to suit the population in speech dialect.

So from now on I’m going to replace my use of the word “japs” with the acronym JPs. If you like, you can pretend it stands for “Japanese Peoples” but actually that’s just a happy coincidence.

JP: Japan
JPs: Japanese People

For extra points, we can abbreviate the abbreviation to Js. This has the additional benefit of versatility, conforming with the well-established tradtion of prefixing a word with “j-” to mean the japanese version of such-and-such. As in, “Whiteys are often surprised when they see some of the edge cases of J-cuisine, for example raw horse meat .. but the Js seem to love it!”

J-: Japanese version of something, eg. j-pop, j-girls, j-food
Js: Japanese people, eg. “the Js”

If you say Js, you should probably say “the” in front of it, ie “the Js”. If you want to use JPs, you don’t need to say “the”.

JPs. I can’t see how the Js can complain about that. Any JPs want to dispute my proposition, now’s your chance!

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Hilariously, it’s perfectly correct English. My deepest condolences to anyone actually trying to learn this insane language.

From Slashdot, on the simple rules in English for where you should put “i” in relation to “e” when spelling a word containing both together:

It’s perfectly logical. “i” before “e” except after “c” or when sounded like “a” as in “neighbor” or “weigh” unless it’s the “cies” in the plural of a word ending in “cy”, a gerund like “being”, a word starting in “i” prefixed with “re”, or one of these exceptions: albeit ancient atheist caffeine casein cleidoic codeine conscience counterfeit deficient deity efficient eider either feisty financier foreign forfeit glacier gneiss greige greisen heifer heigh-ho height heir heist kaleidoscope keister leisure leitmotiv monteith neither omniscient onomatopoeia peignoir phenolphthalein phthalein prescient proficient protein reveille Rotweiller science seismic seize seizin sheila society sovereign specie species sufficient surfeit teiid their weir or weird. That about covers it.

The Japanese Kanji system is so time-saving and elegant. So much time can be saved by representing in a single kanji what might otherwise take several characters to write, wasting time and space, and also with ambiguous meaning – whereas the kanji’s meaning is clear, obvious and appropriate.

Take for example the kanji for “ran”, a mythical bird – 鸞. A mere thirty strokes – but as we all know, a picture’s worth a thousand words, and who, upon gazing upon that magnificent character, cannot almost feel the らん’s ghostly feathers flitting past his nose? Or, should you find yourself needing to mention “many horses” while writing, why not save yourself some time and just use “驫”? I can practically hear the stampeding hoofs!

The best kanji, though, are found in names, not that your browser will be able to display them. Behold the kanji for otodo/taito/daito, 84 strokes:

I love English, it’s so unambiguous, clearly defined and easy to learn. For example the word set, and how it has over 110 possible meanings. There are 56 meanings of the verb set, 11 meanings of the adjective set, and 47 meanings of the noun set, not counting subtle variations of these meanings. The simple beauty of this elegantly efficient language brings tears to my eyes, not to mention to those of any ESL student.