The whole conversation about slang got me feeling a bit sad because I find a lot of the slang in Japanese really creative, so let me go into a few aspects of JP slang that I personally like:

New verbs are constantly being added to the lexicon. Take “tapiru”, for example.
A couple of years ago tapioca/bubble tea exploded in popularity, particularly with young people. People were going out for it so much the verb “tapiru” was coined to express the act of having or going out for bubble tea!
There’s also convenient stuff like misuru (to make a mistake), and disuru (to insult someone). I particularly like disuru because it’s literally taken from “diss” which is slang in English to begin with. It’s like inception slang.
There’s riajuu which stands for “riaru (real) juujitsu”, referring to people who are well adjusted and living their best lives with friends and significant others as opposed to those of us Twitter dwellers.
And this isn’t even touching on the sheer amount of net slang that exists. Many people already know about “kusa haeru” (lit: growing grass), which stems from “www” or the net slang way to say “lol”. The w’s lined up together look like grass, which led to the coining of the phrase
There’s a lot of outdated slang (called “shigo”—dead language) that goes back into fashion in cycles, or that have a few survivors that make it into modern use. “zagin de shisu” is a classic example.
“Zagin de shisu” is “ginza de sushi” (sushi at Ginza) with the words (except for de) flipped. It was a popular turn of phrase during the 80’s, when tougo (flipped language) was particularly in fashion. Nowadays people use it as a tongue in cheek callback to bubble era frivolity.
However! Did you know that this trend of flipped words dates all the way back to the Edo period? In fact, common words like “darashinai” (slovenly) originate from their unflipped versions (shidaranai—same meaning)!
The word “neta” (material for a story, article, joke, etc) is also a flipped version of “tane”, which means the same thing (among other things).

Slang goes deep in Japanese.
The reason why you see a lot of “meme” (I hate using this as shorthand for slang but they kinda are intrinsically linked at this point) language used for charas who are gyaru is because they’re basically the same demographic as the people who use “meme” language: teenage girls
Of course it’s not a 1 to 1 correlation, but it’s pretty darn close when it comes down to the spirit of the words. This sort of adaptation is tricky, but it’s really rewarding when it works out, particularly because Japanese is so mired in its own colorful slang.

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More from @sakaimii

2 May
How was studying Japanese in college? Did you enjoy it? — I loved studying Japanese in college, but I will admit that my class was also like...really intense LOL
I feel like I should make this into a thread because there were a lot of Wild Things about it curiouscat.qa/sakaimii/post/…
So we studied from this book called JSL—Japanese the Spoken Language, which is this book that was developed in the 80’s to help businessmen do business in Bubble era Japan. So it’s like...really aggressive about getting you to actively speak Japanese, particularly formal Japanese
We’d have to study the chapters of the book and practice these drills on our own and then we would effectively be tested on whether or not we mastered the drills in class. You were not allowed to speak English in class, so it was very clear if you didn’t do your homework
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2 May
Wow! Thank you so very Much!

Could you possibly help me find fan translation for I7? It looks like many have del… — Sorry for the delay! The i7 wiki has all the translations that are available listed here:

https://idolish7.fando… curiouscat.qa/sakaimii/post/…
Just to be clear, while in a grey zone (as all fan translations are), i7 official has NOT banned fan translations. There was a bunch of confusion when they updated their terms, but it was mostly to prevent videos and full transcriptions of the Japanese script from being released
The reason why fan translations are always in a grey zone is because IP holders have the right to ban them, but most places turn a blind eye to it, and that is more or less what i7 as a franchise (and...basically every other franchise) is doing. Think of it like how doujinshi is.
Read 5 tweets
14 Dec 20
I’ve been thinking about the key to continuing creative pursuits, and I think it’s a combo of:

-Enjoyment
-Healthy critique from those you trust
-A desire to see it to the end

And most importantly:

-A completely unreasonable part of you that thinks you can do anything
Enjoyment is easy. It’s what gets you through the door, and ultimately why you do it in the first place. It should generally be fun, though it may not ALWAYS be fun.
Critique is important, but you don’t have to take it unsolicited from any and everyone. And you shouldn’t, really. You can’t please everyone, and that’s fine. So instead, find someone whose feedback really counts for you, and comes from a good place.
Read 7 tweets
12 Dec 20
I made a tweet about a year ago about how Touken Ranbu really set the stage for joseimuke media to get going, but I started thinking about how for a couple of years before that, we already had anime paving that path as well.
I think TouRabu likely was the turning point when things switched over to games, but about two years before that, the success of the first season of the Utapri anime in 2011 ushered in a wave of series with an ensemble cast of male characters largely created for a female audience
Prior to that, most of the series that were hugely popular with women were not necessarily made FOR them in a demographic sense; there were a lot of very popular Jump series (Reborn comes to mind), or mecha series like Gundam that have historically had a lot of female fans
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4 Nov 19
And here is a thread of the Katanashu story. It's the full story, so this will be long. Enjoy!
The Katanashu are a top-secret special task force created by the capital to manage the yokai of Hikagemachi. Their main job is to oversee the gate between the human realm and the town of Hikagemachi, where yokai reside.
Hikagemachi is a town that mirrors the human realm. As such, it isn’t rare for humans to accidentally wander into it. It is the Katanashu’s duty to find any humans who have wandered into Hikagemachi and manipulate their memories before returning them back where they came from.
Read 69 tweets

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