Japanese internet slang 2014


When you go to Japanese 2ch (Japanese textboard nearly 2.5million posts, and famous for Densha-Otoko), you will find the words you have never seen. There are cyber-slangs all over. I do not catch up these words and do not understand many of them. For example, “orz” /oruz/ represents “depressing, disappointing, despairing, and unfortunate”. This is coming from the image below.
orz1
So, I made a list of 10 words that I have found them interesting and have seen a lot. It would be a very interesting NLP project that a computer program automatically finds new words in the internet. Anyways, here is the current Japanese internet slang.

1. オワコン  “Owakon”  /owakon/
Meaning: Ended contents,things that is not topic or buzzed anymore,it’s over, it’s out
e.g. ~ wa Owakon dayo.
“~ is ended contents/~ is out”

2. jk  “jk”  /jeikei/
Meaning: joshikiteki ni kangaete “regarded as common sense,based upon common sense”
e.g. soko wa iubeki daro jk.
“you should have said that based upon common-sense”

3. リア充  “Riajyu”  /riajyu/
Meaning: real life is fulfilling. “Having fulfilling days in real life”
e.g. riajyu dane.
“you have fulfilling days in the real life.”

4. wktk  “WaKuTeKa”  /wakuteka/
Meaning: an abbreviation of waku waku teka teka. ” very exited and shiny skins”
This is coming from 2ch’s ascii art (the picture below)

wktk

5. ワロス  “warosu”  /waros/
Meaning: warau + su “It’s funny”.


6. 最中  “monaka”  /monaka/
Meaning: stories or people have no credibility/unauthentic.
This word is used mostly in “Morning Musume (Japanese idol group)”‘s thread in 2ch



7. うp  “up”  /up/
Meaning: up/upload.
Japanese language is moraic language which means Japanese word syllable structure is CV (a consonant and a vowel pair). Therefore, when you type “up” in Japanese keyboard input methods, it returns vowels in Japanese u=う, and p as “p”. It takes sometimes to change the input method, so Japanese internet users uses うp as “up”.
e.g. うp shite~.
“please upload that”

8. メンヘラ  “menhera”  /menhera/
Meaning: an abbreviation of mental healther. Mental health in Japanese is usually used in negative sense. Internet inhabitants (2ch) added a suffix ‘-er’ to mental health to describe someone who has a mental issues.
e.g. Anoko wa menhera-kei(-kei means a group of ~) dayone.
She seems a group of people who has a mental issues.
This word is usually used describing females who are hysteric and depressed among the 2ch community and internet inhabitants.

9. ktkr  “kitakore”  /kitakore/
Meaning: an abbreviation of “kitakore”. “It came (with excitement)”

10.自宅警備員  “Zitaku Keibiin”  /jitaku keibi in/
Meaning: a security officer of own house = someone who stays at home all day (NEET: young people who is not in education, employment or training)


1 Comment

  1. I know this article is old and you’ve ended this blog, but this was a very helpful list for me and you gave me information I couldn’t find anywhere else. thank you for making this.

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