Thursday, April 26, 2018

兄貴, Aniki - Meaning in Japanese

In Japanese, aniki is a way to refer to someone's "older brother," just like oniisan お兄さん, but it's often used in other ways, like to refer to someone whom the speaker consider to be his big bro, or to one's senior in a gang.
Wednesday, April 25, 2018

オヤジ, Oyaji - Meaning in Japanese - 親父, 親仁, 親爺

The word oyaji means "father" in Japanese, making it synonymous with otousan, but sometimes it can refer to a man of certain age, similar to how the word ojisan works, or the owner of a shop instead

oneesan

In Japanese, oneesan お姉さん means "older sister," and sometimes refers to a young girl. It's also romanized onēsan, with a macron for the long vowel.

The younger counterpart is imouto, "young sister." The male counterparts are oniisan お兄さん and otouto, "older brother" and "younger brother," respectively.

Friday, April 13, 2018

Family Words

For reference, a list of words for family members in Japanese.
Sunday, April 8, 2018

Tarou, Ichirou, Jirou, Saburou, Shirou

If you've watched a lot of anime, chances are you've come across a character or another with a name like this: Tarou 太郎, Ichirou 一郎, Jirou 次郎, Saburou 三郎, Shirou 四郎, or something else that ends in rou 郎. The question is: what's the meaning behind this naming pattern?

Well, it's a Japanese custom called haikoumei 輩行名, in which sons, only sons, male children, are named according to their birth order. An interesting thing of this practice is that you can tell whether a character has an older brother or not just from his name alone.

~kko ~っ娘

In Japanese, ~kko ~っ娘 is a suffix attached to an attribute to refer to a type of girl that features that attribute, e.g. meganekko メガネっ娘 is a girl that wears "glasses," megane メガネ. For reference, this article will list some of such types of girls.

The suffix is also spelled ~kko ~っ子, ~kko ~っこ