SkyPigeon123
22094
587
7
Mar 2, 2026 6:18 AM
SkyPigeon123
22094
587
7
Cosmicfisherman
#1 Hilarious.
Besamel
For me, the weirdest one is that in Japan a buffet is called Viking. (バイキング baikingu)
Onlyhereforthelaughs
#1 The merry-go-round revival, just name it Horsenado and slap some extra fans on it to feel the wind.
cousteau
So basically, most countries call it some variation of "merry-go-round", "carousel", or "alive-dude".
svent
Pretty sure the word circumtranslate was made up for this post.
cytherians
Underrated post.
I thought that it sounded a bit odd. Hadn't heard of it before, but then there are still a number of words I've never heard of, so I figured I missed this one somehow.
Weird, just "translate" is all that was needed. I wonder what the original writer of that was thinking.
LeftRightThere
tinyfootprints
My Japanese friend didn't understand the word "Laundomat", so after a bit of struggling, I decided to try "Coinraundry". When I said that, recognition lit up on his face, and he exclaimed, "Oh, you know the Japanese word for it!"
CarInAVet
To me it's always interesting when Japan uses an English loan word, but uses an archaic definition of the word. For example, they use the word "romance" (though they leave the S-sound off the end) to mean something fantastical/improbable in a way that is moving, rather than talking about romantic love. The phrase "a man's romance" seems to be a common way of elevating the experience of, like, wearing knight armour and shit for the fun of it.
unclesporky
I know both words are probably correct, but I always thought of merry-go-round as the disappointing little slabs of metal with railing to grip onto at the playground, and the horse tornado for children as carousel. Probably wrong, probably interchangeable, that's just where my mind goes.
MadamPuddifoot
If they were disappointing to you, you weren't playing on them correctly. Those were kid tornados and they would fling you several feet if you had wimpy grip strength!
SacrificialClam
Does everyone have a favorite translator?
roughingupthesuspect
“Favorite translator” implies the existence of a less than favorite translator. ..
OnanCicero
Australian Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, Waxing eloquent on the subject of Australia's industrial relations to a visiting Japanese delegation said:
We're just not interested in playing silly buggers on this issue...
there was a rustle of head shaking and general bemusement evidentall round the hall when the translation came through on the head phones.
The translator - acting on the principle when in doubt, keep it literal:
We're just not interested in acting as laughing homosexuals...
jgjgjgjgjgjgjg
Horse tornado for children. Love it.
Clayman8
Sounds like a Temu chinglish translation, and honestly...
It kinda rocks.
SteersAndQueers
You had me at horse tornado.
JimmyWalkerTexasRanger
https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1MXhjOTRlbGloajdsbWJ3ZHZhM2lycHJjc3dnaHl3OWp5Y3N5NWxnZyZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/OL4LjUYS2UlMSYehkH/200w.gif
cytherians
I'd have gone with "Horse Cyclone for Children" myself...
Or "Revolving Horse Concert for Children". 🤪😏😉
shitheadtookmyname
Cyclone would be a terrible choice. it means like five different weather phenomena
Whatdoyousaytoanicecupoftea
Boo! I want an adult horse tornado
nihiltres
Vorphalack
Sounds like a rodeo.
Whatdoyousaytoanicecupoftea
This aint my first adult horse tornado
RitzBitz25
I've been learning japanese for a couple years. Went to Japan for a few weeks, using as much of my Japanese knowledge as I could. It's amazing the sheer number of times I looked up how to say a word, only for it to be an English word with a Japanese accent to it.
Boksha
That made me immediately doubt (i.e. I'm 95% sure it's bullshit) the above story. Over 20% of the Japanese dictionary is made up of loanwords (no, the post's title isn't a coincidence; that's just the actual percentage of the dictionary), and this is telling me an actual professional translator, one that's actually assigned to be JAPANESE AMBASSADOR for an entire country, doesn't know the strategy of just trying the English word when you can't come up with a native Japanese one?
martineb72
Who said she was permanently assigned translator to the Japanese Ambassador? She was an Ambassador to Hungary. She happens to know some Japanese. She wasn't at the time a translator at all.
Z0op
Heh yup, an important one, beer, is just birru. Though I’ve heard they got that word from the dutch
spookyu
I lived in Okinawa for six years, this is 1000% true and on occasion infuriating. Listening to a Japanese person say "potato" is hilarious though lol, probably as funny as me drunkenly guiding an old Japanese taxi driver in my broken-ass nihongo lol
Z0op
Potatturu?
spookyu
-_-
Xenarion
And English itself borrows a lot of words from other languages. A lot of modern words tend to be copied between languages too.
Psyskwr
It is very common to find untranslatable words between languages, (even though some can be, we just don't) and in most cases they use the original word from the language it derived from. Kindergarden is one of the double standards, translatable but we don't. Kindergarden in German to English translates to child garden. We all know it's the beginning of education, but we don't say "Going to drop the kids off at the garden.", or do we?
Swiggy1957
Like the cobra chicken. The Japanese have borrowed more English than we have Japanese
Feralkyn
Wasn't that Indian or something
Swiggy1957
No. A post I did years ago. Hispanic worker was constantly being attacked by a Canada goose. He couldn't remember the word goose. He called other a cobra chicken.
Feralkyn
Yeah I've seen it tons of times, but Hispanic makes sense. I couldn't remember, but I knew it wasn't Japanese
SimSimSimsalabim
Well, if Japan occupied US and not the other way around, American English would have much more Japanese words.
torokunai
honcho, tycoon, skosh . . . a few more but not a whole lot, other than the obvious stuff like ninja etc.
Swiggy1957
Everyone borrows words from other languages. I want to see English speakers to adopt the Japanese word for convenience stores: Cobini, which isca bastardization of convenience store.
whoatherebigfella
If it wasn’t for the Mr Roboto song by Styx, I wouldn’t know any Japanese words.
Swiggy1957
My first Jspanese word was Sayanara.
cytherians
Ah, sayonara. I think that was mine too. Might've been from a cartoon.
Also, gotta know konnichiwa.
Krossis
I'm assuming you mean sayonara?
Swiggy1957
Correct. Now you see why I didn't try to write it in Kanji.
droningonaboutsomething
I’m sure you know more than you think you know! Karaoke, sushi (lots of food miso, ramen, tofu,etc.) , emoji, karate, futon, rickshaw, koi, zen, brands like Nintendo or Subaru (Subaru is actually the name of the constellation we call 7sisters their logo {their culture sees it as six stars})
cytherians
Ah, now THAT explains why the Subaru logo is a series of stars in an ellipse. Thanks!
Toyota... when pronounced Toyoda means fertile rice patty. Do Japanese think of that when they hear the name?
droningonaboutsomething
Toyota is also a local so I’d imagine it would be like hearing something like “the park meadows mall” and understanding it references what was there before?
Subaru means unity and from what I understand it was a big merger of six companies so they called it unity and took the unity constellation
cansado
It’s probably not too dissimilar from an English speaker hearing the name Taylor and thinking of an occupational seamstress, ie not that often
DutchBoeremeisie
It's even cuter than that - they call them "merīgōrando". I'm not convinced they would've understood the word "merry-go-round" with her pronounciation and without any context anyway.
thepicklebucket
On the other hand they may hear "merīgōrando" and when they say it they think they are saying "merry go round" and they just keep saying it to each other as a question, in an endless loop. At least, that's the way it goes for me attempting to speak French.
CrimeThinker
Hanbaga
Vorphalack
Nice. I've always liked Meri Kurisumasu for "merry Christmas."
DinkyDoinky
Their name for playstation portable was just the funniest shit when i first heard it
FiftyShadesOfTiramisu
It's similar in Korean. Fried chicken = chikin, high heels = haihil, sunglasses = seongeullaeseu, stockings = seutaking etc. Meanwhile in Germany, we call a cell phone a handy and a tuxedo a smoking. We love English loanwords, but we believe they would be better used for something entirely different.
seekingdaedalus
In English, the "Tuxedo" is a suit style that evolved from the "Smoking Jacket" - so that one does make sense.
Milkarius
At least I might not get into trouble for giving someone a handy under the table in Germany
IlluminaBlade
So, I gotta know, why do they throw the o in at the end?
pixelsnader
O is round. It's so you can visualise what they're saying.
dragoonwraith
It’s worth noting that while it’s true that the Japanese symbols used for “merry-go-round” would be pronounced with the final “-o” if read as Japanese, readers *are* supposed to leave it off, understanding from context that it’s a foreign word that doesn’t have that and it only appears in the Japanese as an artifact of the syllabary they use. Unfortunately, the only way for a Japanese reader to know that is to be familiar with the foreign word, so just reading it as Japanese is common.
TheOnlyTwin45
Interesting, very. Unrelated to this story or Japanese, but any of you informed folks wanna comment on "Mele Kalikimacka"
HenryLongfellowIII
They do that a lot in Japanese. When a Japanese cop demanded my passport (I was lost and had the temerity to ask for directions) he said "Pasupōto!".
wantfastcars
With one exception, all Japanese syllables are a combination of a consonant sound and a vowel sound. There's no "d" sound in Japanese, you need a "da," "di,"(/ji/zi, this one's a little weird) "du," "de," or "do." As such, for loan words that end in a consonant sound in their native language, a vowel sound gets appended just because of how Japanese works as a language.
Kemi337
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7y4av-Dr4I
Xenarion
The funniest one I've heard was the name "Urd" being pronounced "Urudo". My man, you almost doubled the number of letters!
kaiken1987
What's the word one exception? Now I'm curious. Is there an interesting reasoning or is it just some weird word
Fuyu159753
ん (n) is the exception. A word can end with n, no extra vowel needed.
Also no japanese word can start with ん. If a word starts with n, it needs to be one of those: na ni nu ne no (な に ぬ ね の). The game "shiritori" uses this to determine the loser.
LateNightBunnyParty
I dunno why I never made that connection before. Cherokee is the same way. If I wanna spell an English word phonetically using the syllabary, it's (nearly; there is a S sound) always gonna end with a vowel sound. It's also a tonal language, so where you put the emphasis can wildly change the meaning of the word.
LateNightBunnyParty
(Sorry. I'm learning one language, and my husband is attempting to learn the other, and it's cool to see the two have something like that in common.)
CarInAVet
In Japanese, the one single-consonant syllable is ん, n. They actually have a word game where one person says a word (eg さけ sake) and the next person has to come up with a word that starts with the previous word's ending (eg けが kega). You lose if you use a word that ends in ん (eg らめん ramen) because you CAN'T start a word with ん, it would have to be な na, に ni, ぬ nu, etc.
Sageypie
It's where the whole, "husbando, roboto, waifu, etc etc" thing comes from. Japan uses loanwords pretty liberally and they typically amend them as such. Still, it doesnt make your racist uncle mitch saying he needs some, "gasu for my hyundai caru", any less fucked when he says it.
Colopty
It also means the loan words tend to be really long compared to what they were in the original language, and compared to native Japanese words.
Though funnily enough the example sentence from the racist uncle is legitimately something you could say in Japanese and maybe be understood. Mitch messed up how some of the words are said though, for instance it's "kaa", not "caru".
Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW4AiEqKGto
Kemi337
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7y4av-Dr4I
mithiwithi
This is why loanwords are often abbreviated as well - "konbini" for "convenience store", for example. (Japan also doesn't have a "v" sound distinct from "b".)
Ionico
..that last bit feels... like a thing that needed lifting off your chest?
Sageypie
It's true. I have a confession. Uncle Mitch can go fuck himself.