This is a poll for **non-Japanese speakers**, people who have **not** actively studied Japanese, and non-hardcore anime fans (but casually watching anime is fine)

I’m curious how mainstream certain words have become outside Japan. You can pick all the ones you recognize (multiple responses allowed).

Part 1 / 3 🧵

This is a poll for **non-Japanese speakers**, people who have **not** actively studied Japanese, and non-hardcore anime fans (but casually watching anime is fine)

I’m curious how mainstream certain words have become outside Japan. You can pick all the ones you recognize (multiple responses allowed).

Part 2 / 3 🧵

This is a poll for **non-Japanese speakers**, people who have **not** actively studied Japanese, and non-hardcore anime fans (but casually watching anime is fine)

I’m curious how mainstream certain words have become outside Japan. You can pick all the ones you recognize (multiple responses allowed).

Part 3 / 3 🧵

@FlockOfCats
random notes:

pan is the word for bread (or similar to) in many romance languages so i would probably blame that one on my questionable Spanish rather than Japanese culture

the spelling i’m more familiar with from pop culture is senpai not sempai as in the poll (voted recognize anyway). my phones spellcheck seems to agree as its trying to correct the m to an n haha

of this list kawaii probably wins most universally recognizable, tho personally i probably use the food words more often

@Satsuma

In retrospect, “pan” was probably too easy 😊.

Yeah, the senpai / sempai is tricky. It is the ん = “n” character but it sounds more like an “m” in front of “p”, “b” and “m” sounds, so the romanization gets a little wonky

Lots of others with variants, like:
Conbini, Combini, Konbini, Kombini
Tempura, Tenpura

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@FlockOfCats makes sense! romanization (or really any kind of transliteration) is a tricky business

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