Japanese Loanwords

Couldn't rice wine also be mirin?

I'm mirin

this is a very delayed conversation

im with you on that. i wouldve gotten at least 5 or 6 more if spelling wouldve been more lenient

I tried spelling koi a few different ways starting with c. Sadly, none worked.

How about some different spellings for kamikaze? Like kamakaze and kamikazi and kamakazi, etc. Thanks, quizmaster!

Banzai/bansai, saki, and jiaozi were variants I tried before getting them right. (Though I think the last may be a Romanisation from the Mandarin pronunciation... same characters, though.)

Banzai/bansai is a different word, isn't it? I always thought it was a sort of battle cry, but I may just be basing that on the British TV programme of that name.

I missed sake because I spelled it saki.

I wasn't saying that saki is a correct spelling. QM asked which ones we were having problems with on the spelling and that's the one I missed at first. Not all of us are familiar with the correct spellings, so if QM chooses to accept only proper spellings, it's one thing. If he/she is willing to be lenient on the spelling as long as we demonstrate we have the knowledge even if we don't know the correct spelling, that's another thing. Every quiz maker can be as strict or as lenient with answers as they choose. I'm another one who tries to accept any spelling which is close, but I also understand the POV of those who want only correct spellings.

I always take a moment to figure out where the Us and Os go in sudoku

The only one I missed on spelling was karaoke. The way it's usually pronounced had me trying karioke and karioki.

yea we say it kara-oke. But I have heard it being said like kari-oki in english ( is that in both british and american english or in one? pretty sure america says it like that. well, maybe more like karee yokee)

Surprisingly easy. Didn't get futon though.

I only got it because i remember it from another quiz about loan words. I always thought fouton was french. If you pronounce it FOU-tahn, it does sound Japanese, but if you say fou-TONE (minus the pronunciation of the 'NE' of course) it sounds french.

I think you might be confused with fauteuil which is a big luxury chair

I think you should accept obento. :/

Agree!

I hate when I know the answer until I read the question and then the word escapes my brain

100% boo ya

lack of punctuation there threw me for a second, haha ( and not a second hahah ;) )

I thought, you got a 100% of what??

*booyah

this is a tough quiz because alternate spellings and incorrect spellings will kill you. saki is another accepted spelling. but moreover the kamakazzi type stuff.

Saki means "previous" in Japanese. Unlike English where we can read vowels multiple different ways, Japanese vowels (when romanized) can only be read one way: a = ah, e = eh?, i = Eat (minus the t) , o=oh?, u = ooooooooooooo. Saki and Kamikaze are two perfect examples of English mispronunciation.

I disagree with the clue for kamikaze as suicide bomber.

Yukata is the informal garb often worn in summer time.

I do not like sushi and therefore couldn't think of that answer or wasabi. Oh well.

Anybody else just type "sushi" as soon as the quiz started before looking at the clues? LOL ... then I tried "samurai" and it didn't work, so I figured I'd better start reading.

all my life I have heard sushi. Now suddenly since about a year I started hearing about sushimi also in reference to raw fish, I still have to figure out exactly what it means ( and what the difference with sushi is, are they two different terms, or is this a british/american thing again) But never bothered to look it up haha.

sushi is a type of seasoned rice with various toppings or other ingredients rolled with it, most often raw fish. Raw fish by itself is sashimi. Sushi technically does not have to have fish.

I make sushi at home and I use all kinds of fillings - cooked shrimp, crab, veggies - even one with ham, avocado and cream cheese. I don't do raw fish at home, though, I leave that to the experts who have had training in how not to kill their customers.

The clue on rice and raw fish seems to confuse, or better said, combine wrapped rice rolls which are "sushi" and raw fish which are "sashimi." The author needs to fix this.

Those 500+ episodes of anime have served me well XD

And my brother had a futon when I was younger XD

And that book in A Series of Unfortunate Events where they used wasabi as a cure XD

And my siblings were really into origami when I was super young, so I kinda grew up with it XD

OHMYGOSH MY WHOLE LIFE HAS BEEN PREPARING ME FOR THIS QUIZ!!!

weeb

Without actually being able to speak or understand Japanese, I pride myself on my knowledge of Japanese language and how it has been imported to Western culture. But I can not for the life of me ever remember the name of that damn radish!!

100%. I kept typing "daimyo" for military ruler, then samurai thinking the quiz had its terminology incorrect, then realized that shogun was the obvious answer : P #JapaneseHistoryMajor

I think "kamakaze" should be accepted too

started typing yakuza before the page was even loaded, but no. no.

Tempura is also borrowed first from Portuguese "tempero" or "temporas". Then English borrow this borrowed word from Japanese. Both tempura and gyoza can be called as "double-loanwords", at least in my words. :D

I couldn't get passed anime and never, ever thought of manga.

Box lunch can also be obento obento is in a more polite way

Gyoza is Chinese.

Jiaozi is Chinese. Gyoza - the actual loanword in English - is most certainly Japanese.

To try to get other answers, I tried Tofu and Samurai, and was surprised they are not the answers to anything!

I tried goyoza for gyoza...

and I keep missing Bento and Daikon

but did the word come to English via Portuguese or Japanese?

Yeah, as someone above pointed out - it's a double loanword. It may have originate from Portuguese, but it comes to English via Japanese.

For those not familiar with Japanese spelling and pronunciation, I can see how getting some these could be difficult. Many of the common English pronunciations are woefully off. I think this is most true of karaoke, which seems to usually be pronounced in English as "carry-oak-y" despite that being very hard to arrive at from the spelling. Gyoza often gets rendered as three syllables (Guy-or-za) not two (the letter 'y' is always a consonant in Japanese). There's also the issue of English pronunciation usually transforming the 'e' sound, especially at the end of words, into what would be represented as 'i' in standard transliteration. For the uninitiated 'e' should be pronounced as in 'net' (always) and 'i' should be pronounced like the 'y' in 'baby'.

I agree, てんぷら (tenpura) is how it's spelled in Japanese, but ん (n) sounds like an m before a b, p, or m.

I've never heard of Bento. I was so confused because all I could think of was "lunchables"

We were at a hotel in Kansas City that had a kitchen, and we decided to cook our supper meal. My MIL and I walked down the street to an open market to look for fresh veggies. We saw the biggest parsnips I'd ever seen and we decided to cook them as part of our meal. We scrubbed them and cut them up into a pan, added some water, covered them and waited for them to cook. The room was suddenly engulfed in a terrible smell which we traced to the parsnips. We dumped them in the trash. My husband had gotten off the elevator and he said the odor was strong out in the hall and asked what it was. I told him it was the parsnips. He looked at them in the trash and started laughing as he said, "Those aren't parsnips, those are daikon radishes." I've never lived it down. I felt sorry for housekeeping the next day as they tried to rid that room of the pungent odor. So I had no trouble getting daikon on this quiz.

Yeah, I kinda agree. Most of these are Japanese words used to describe things specific to Japan, not true loanwords. I'd add kamikaze to your list of true loanwords, as I've frequently seen it used generically as a term for any attack that takes down the attacker along with it. Tempura... arguably. I've certainly seen it used as a battering technique outside of a Japanese cuisine context.

Better examples might be: typhoon, emoji, tofu, dojo and zen. And in the more unfortunate corners of the English-speaking internet: senpai, kawaii and otaku.

Didn't realize edamame, tempura, and futon were Japanese. Sudoku was obvious but yet I somehow never realized it was Japanese either

I though it was like this american puzzle made by a Japanese guy so it has a japanese sounding name.

But, it does make sense. Japanese name: japanese product.

Surprised not to see katana.