journal features

Japanese double speak

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Tokyo, 2008.01.20

It has recently come to my attention that there are considerably more double-words in Japanese than I'd previously known. Here are some that I now know:

tsuru-tsuru (the feeling that a mineral bath instills)

kari-kari (crisp)

koro-koro (something rolling)

gari-gari (crunching or scratching sound)

gero-gero (sound of a frog)

goro-goro (sound a cat makes)

geri-geri (I think this one is diarrhea)

giri-giri (barely; a close thing, as when catching a train)

puchi-puchi (bubble wrap)

pichi-pichi (young, vivacious in appearance)

ma-ma (same as the English word so-so)

moshi-moshi (greeting on the phone)

chau-chau ("it's not like that" / not authentic)

ten-ten ("dot dot", used when explaining how someone should write a katakana/hiragana character. e.g. the difference between か and が)

Honourable mention goes to:

toki-doki (sometimes)

The ones above are just ones I've heard/used. It turns out that there are a LOT more

rand()m quote

Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.

—T.S. Eliot