In Japanese, ko 子 literally means "child," or "kid," but it can be used to refer to adults, people younger than you, and even animals or machines.

• "Child"
  
  • お子さん
  • 子供
• Toward Adults
• Toward Animals
• Toward Objects
• 娘
• Words Containing 子
  
  • Not Exactly "Child"
  • shi 子
  • 子分
  • 踊り子
  • 男の子, 女の子
  • 人の子
  • 槌の子
  • 良い子, 悪い子
  • っ子
    
    • 苛めっ子
    • 苛められっ子
    • 売れっ子
    • 末っ子
    • ママっ子
• At The End of Girls' Names

In Japanese, there's a practice of using a noun that describes people, like kyaku 客, "customer," and prefixing it with a honorific suffix like chan, san, or sama, and maybe a honorific prefix like that o or go, turning the noun into a more honorific version of itself: okyakusan お客さん.

• Why It Happens
• Examples

One of the first things you notice when learning Japanese are the honorific suffixes, like san, chan and kun, but there's another type of honorific too: the honorific prefix o お or go ご. The kanji for both these words would be 御, but it's usually not written with kanji. In this post I'll explain its usage.

• 御 is O or Go?
• Function
• Examples & Vocabulary

In Japanese, bouten 傍点, "side marks," are dots written in the furigana 振り仮名 space that express emphasis. They work like italicized text, or bold text. To emphasize a phrase, every pronounceable character of the phrase gets a dot beside it—punctuation doesn't get dots.

In Japanese, sometimes words are separated by a middle dot, a ・, also called an interpunct, or interpoint, or nakaguro 中黒, "middle black [mark]," nakaten 中点, "middle dot," nakapotsu 中ぽつ, "middle spot," nakamaru 中丸, "middle circle, " etc. But what does this ・ mean in Japanese?

Well, it has multiple functions.

• Pause Function
• How to Translate
• Separating Parallel Terms
• Separating Katakana Words
• Descriptions and Titles
• Ellipsis
• Other Usage
• How to Type

The Japanese language loves loaning words from everywhere, and when they do it with gairaigo 外来語 they katakanize those words so they can be written with katakana. The same happens with foreign names, titles of anime in English, etc.

But there's a problem: Japanese rarely uses spaces, and it relies on having multiple alphabets to tell the words apart in a sentence. Then, how'd you separate two katakana words in Japanese, given they're all written with just one alphabet: the katakana?

There are multiple ways.

• Middle Dot
• No Middle Dot
• Inconsistencies
• Space
• = Equal Sign
• Stylized Symbols

In Japanese, zoku 続 means "sequel," or more literally, "continuation." It's found in the names of some anime which refer to the second season of a series or some other sort of continuation.

It's spelled with the same kanji as tsuduku 続く, which means "to continue" and is sometimes found at the end of an episode (typically spelled with hiragana, as tsuduku つづく) because the series continues in the next episode.

In Japanese, the word gattai 合体, written with the kanji for the words "join" and "body," means, literally, to combine two or more bodies into one. Although the term can be used in a number of ways, in anime it's pretty much always used to refer to one thing: combining mechas!!!

• Meaning
  
  • In Anime
  • Sexual Slang

In Japanese, daku 抱く and idaku 抱く are two different words written with the same kanji that have multiple, different meanings.

The word daku だく means "to embrace [someone]," "to hug [someone]," "to have sex [with someone]," and "(for a bird) to sit [on eggs]."

The word idaku いだく means "to embrace," "to hug," and, unlike daku だく, it can be used toward thoughts: to embrace an idea, to embrace a feeling.

• Usage
  
  • To Hug
  • To Have Sex With
  • To Sit On Eggs
  • To Feel
• History
• References

Update: since around 23rd of July, 2022, the code in this article no longer works. It's uncertain if Pixiv permanently dropped support for embedding or this is some temporary error.

Since I've been embedding a dozen of Pixiv images in this blog for reference, I'm going to go off-topic for a bit to show how to embed these things.

Now, you might be asking: why would anyone want to embed them instead of just infringing copyright uploading it to somewhere else? Well, there are pros and cons

The pros are:

• If the artist deletes the post from Pixiv, it'll automatically disappear from your website, respectfully.
• Spend less bandwidth because the images are hosted on Pixiv.

In anime, when oni 鬼 characters are involved, it's common for there to be a blue oni and a red oni, the blue oni having a single horn and the red oni two horns.

The origin of this blue oni red oni trope comes from a certain children's tale about friendship. It was a popular one, so references to it spread across all media and fiction, not just anime.

Note that, most of the time, there's usually no deeper meaning to the red oni blue oni combo. It's simply that if there's a red oni, the blue oni will show up sometime, or vice-versa.

In Japanese, oni 鬼 is a kind of "supernatural being," youkai 妖怪 in Japan's culture, often translated to English as "ogre" or "troll," although those would be technically different things. Generally speaking, an oni in anime is a big, strong, scary, evil, rugged, powerful humanoid monster, who has one or two horns on its head, fangs, and the like, but designs may vary. Thematically, humans are said to be afraid of oni because oni are said to devour humans, they're generally brutes or savages, and there's a well-known story about a blue and a red oni who try to become friends with humans through some sacrifice to make them be not afraid.

Not to be confused with oniisan お兄さん, which means "older brother."

• Context: Gouki reveals his true form. He's a...:
• kyuukonki
  吸魂鬼
  Spirit-sucking demon.
  • {tamashii wo suu} oni
    魂を吸う鬼
    A demon [who] {sucks souls}.

Nowadays, oni are normally portrayed featuring colored skin, specially red and blue, just like the modern day ogre is usually green. In anime, oni characters can usually talk and have some sort of connection with the demon world, afterlife, hell, makai 魔界, or something supernatural like that.

Apparently, the word oni would mean it's an invisible spirit, originally, but that's rarely the case in modern fiction.

For reference, a vocabulary list of sounds animals make in Japanese containing the onomatopoeia commonly used in manga, games, etc. Note that some of these words don't really sound like the sounds animals make in reality, but they're the ones that are written anyway.

See the "cry" section for the word for "crying" in Japanese.

The following words do not have kanji, they're only written with hiragana or with katakana. The katakana version is in the parentheses, by the way.

nya にゃ (ニャ)
nyaa にゃー (ニャー)
nyan にゃん (ニャン)
Sound made by "cats," neko 猫.
"Meow."

wan わん (ワン)
wanwan わんわん (ワンワン)
Sound made by "dogs," inu 犬.
"Woof."

kon こん (コン)
konkon こんこん (コンコン)
Sound made by "foxes," kitsune 狐.
(as demonstrated in Flying Witch, this is totally wrong, foxes don't make these sounds.)

In Japanese, wan わん is the sound dogs make when they bark, an onomatopoeia. In other words: wan is "woof" in Japanese, or wanwan わんわん means "bow-wow" in Japanese, or something like that.

Note that wan わん doesn't have kanji and may be written with hiragana because hiragana is cuter, or written with katakana as wan ワン.

When wan' わんっ or wan' ワンッ are written instead, with a small tsu っ at the end of the phrase, it emphasizes the sound, expressing a stronger-sounding bark.

In Japanese, a wanko わんこ is a colloquial way to refer to a dog, specially a puppy. The word is formed from an onomatopoeia for the sound dogs make, "woof," in Japanese: wan わん, and ko 子, which in this case is a suffix used to refer to something cute.

So wanko is how you say "doggy" in Japanese. But more literally wanko means "lil' woof" or something like that. Note, however, that despite the cutesy origins of the word, it may be used in a very enraged way depending on the situation.

In Japanese, a nyanko にゃんこ is a colloquial way to refer to a cat, specially a kitten. The word is formed from an onomatopoeia for the sound cats make, "meow," in Japanese: nyan にゃん, and ko 子, which in this case is a suffix used to refer to something cute.

So nyanko is how you say "kitty" in Japanese. But more literally nyanko means "lil' meow" or something like that. Note, however, that despite the cutesy origins of the word, it may be used in a very enraged way depending on the situation.

• Context: an old man wakes up in the body of a girl because of a cat.
• kono... kuso nyanko...!!
  この･･･クソニャンコ･･･！！
  [You]... damn kitty...!!
  (swearing with kono この.)
• kono karada wa nan'ya
  この体はなんや
  What's [up with] this body.
  • nan'ya - same as nanda なんだ, kansai dialect.
• omae wa nanimono ya...
  お前は何者や･･･
  Who are you...?
  • ya - same as the da だ copula, dialectal.
• haa haa
  ハァハァ
  *panting*
  (onomatopoeia.)
• washi ni nan'no urami ga an-nen......!!
  ワシになんの恨みがあんねん･･････！！
  What do [you] have against me......!!?
  • an-nen - contraction of aru nen あるねん, dialectal.
  • ~ni urami ga aru - to have a resentment, grudge against [someone].