Katakana

What's a nicestick?

I've mentioned Katakana before when explaining Kanji. It is the alphabet used to write words taken from other languages - mainly English.

Once borrowed into Japanese these words take on Japanese pronounciation: a 'truck' becomes 'to-ruck-o'; 'bus' becomes 'basu'; and so on. This often makes for an amusing decoding process in shops and restaurants as you sound through the letters, say it a few times, and wait until (and hope) the answer pops into your head. In a cocktail bar the other day: fa... zee.... nay... vu... ru. Hmmmm.... fazee-nay...vuru.... fuzynay-vuru.... Fuzzy Navel! Or: ron-gu-ii-rand-ii-su-da-tee.... Long Island Iced Tea!

However many words come from other languages too - and this often tells you something of Japan's history. For example, because the Portuguese were the first foreigners in Japan following the period of Isolation, the Portuguese names were those usually chosen when describing the strange arrivals from the West. For example in modern Japanese, bread is called パン or pan; cigarettes, cigars and so on are all called タバコ (ta-ba-co), Christians are クリスト (ku-ri-su-to) and England is イギリス (Ig-gi-ri-su) (from "Inglez" perhaps).


Having entered the Japanese lexicon, these words borrowed from other languages start to take on a life of their own. Sometimes the new word is quite ingenious, such as salaryman - a word which seems to capture the grey world of The Office, in a way that business-man, does not. Sometimes however, the result is confusing. What do these words mean for example?

Pasakon
Remokon
Combini
Skill-up
Sexu-hara
nicestick

... Well, just to easy any immediate fears, the picture should help with understanding nice-stick, but you'll find the rest of the answers in the Comments.

PS Check out www.engrish.com for an amusing website largely devoted to this subject.