Japanese Word Thread

[Josiah]

dai-: a prefix meaning big or very much

[Winters Rage]

oh, I remember this one: Kawaii = (arrox.) cute, beautiful, nice, happy(?)

[Josiah]

Specifically, it's cute, sweet (as in "she looks sweet"), pretty (in a cute way), etc. Mostly cute. You wouldn't use it for beautiful (beautiful and cute just aren't the same concept), nice, or happy. Those all have their own words. Also, be careful not to confuse kawaii with the very similar sounding...

kowai: scared, scary

[Josiah]

kirei: pretty, beautiful

[Josiah]

shiri: a rather cute way of saying bottom or butt (in that respect, I guess the closest direct English equivalent would be something like tushy)

[Josiah]

ecchi: the Japanese pronounciation of the letter H, slang word for "adult" situations, products, and behavior (the reason being that H is the first letter of hentai, at least if you write hentai in English...yeah, it's a stretch)

[Josiah]

hakama: traditional Japanese men's "pants" (part of the traditional samurai outfit, now mostly worn as part of the standard kendo uniform)

[Josiah]

getta: Japanese wooden sandles with pegs on the bottom so that the main part of the sandle is an inch or two (sometimes more) off the ground

[Josiah]

tengu: mythological Japanese mountain demons, know for their really long noses and extremely tall getta

[Josiah]

oni: Japanese ogres, often shown as big and strong with a single horn, brightly colored skin, a loin cloth, and a club

[Josiah]

tsuchinoko: legendary (and most likely non-existant) Japanese creature, it looks like a rather short snake that's just swallowed a very large egg. It's somewhat like bigfoot or the lockness monster in terms of existance. Namely, people occasionally report seeing one, and there's even TV specials on it, but no one has ever been able to prove its existance.

[Josiah]

tanuki: often translated as racoon dog, a real Japanese animal relatively similiar to a racoon, they appear a lot in Japanese mythology

[Josiah]

kitsune: fox (the actual animal). In Japanese folklore, foxes often have magical powers.

[Winters Rage]

Oh, yea, I remember reading alot about kitsunes, their like fox-demons, that have 2-9 tails or something, and shoot fire or magic balls out of their hands, they're very deceitful and often disguise themselves as a teenage girl or something similar to that.

and that 'Neko' really means 'cat' in Japanese, but it has acquired a certainly... different... meaning, such as a cross between a human and a cat, as the same with the word kitusne now, usually you'll see a bunch of that online, in chatrooms mainly though.

Correct me if I am wrong.

[Josiah]

kitsune is the word for normal foxes. As I said, they often have magical powers in Japanese folklore (multiple tails and transformation being the most common ones) and they're often seen as being very crafty (just like foxes in European and American folklore, actually). The fireballs and disguising themselves as teenage girls (as opposed to just humans in general) is more of an anime thing though.

In Japanese, neko means cat and kitsune means fox and that's it. While you may occasionally hear an anime character call a cat girl a neko, it's just a dig to draw emphasis to said cat girl's catlike traits. The only people who use neko and kitsune to refer speciffically to cat people and fox people are English speaking anime fans who insist on using as many Japanese words as they can (and most often incorrectly).

inu: dog