Quirks of Japanese: Contractions and Abbreviations

Welcome to a new series, where I’ll be walking you through some of the stranger twists and turns of the Japanese language. As languages go, it’s probably the most reasonable one I speak (certainly makes more sense than English), but it’s different enough from most other languages that there are still lots of things to trip over for a potential student. This series is one part reference guide, and one part trivia, in case you just like languages and learning every little thing you can about them.

For the first article, as you’ve probably guessed, we’re looking at contractions and abbreviations. Japanese is a language that has huge amounts of both, which I personally attribute in part to kanji: A natural system of, for example, cramming an entire proverb into four characters. When you’re used to that kind of space-saving, longer compound words start to look untidy, especially loanwords. Besides that, Japanese slang has a far stronger trend of abbreviation than in, say, English.

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