It took me a few reads to realize you were saying the Japanese write/say “convenience store” as “konbini”
Reminds me of the sarariman I first read about in Neuromancer.
Loan words are interesting micro insight into culture.
Reminds me of the sarariman I first read about in Neuromancer.
Loan words are interesting micro insight into culture.
But knowing how to read the alphabets would have helped a lot more, because there are so many very understandable things sitting right infront of you if only you knew how to read the characters. コンビニエンス seems impenetrable if you don't know the alphabet, but it's just the adapted word for "Convenience": Konbiniensu.
Duolingo copped a lot of flack here in a recent thread, but it was great for initially learning the alphabets, it took nearly no time to memorize Katakana and Hiragana. If you don't know the alphabet you can't even begin to try and learn the language in situ, so that's step one and a huge help when travelling.
They are really straight-forward to learn as, unlike in English, they don't have di and trigraphs and extremely few pronunciation exceptions. Learning the characters can be done in an afternoon, though of course being able to read them quickly will take quite a bit of practice.
Polish workers took the name home and it's now not an uncommon sight in Poland [1], amongst other places.
P.S. Don't eat it. It is disgustingly fat and unhealthy...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapsalon [1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=kapsalon+site%3A.pl
A large serving feeds two easily.
My mind was blown when I realized the same had been done with the Japanese word "mamachari" — that is, a popular bicycle for women that allow them to carry a child and grocery bag.
They're a joy to ride.
So now we have double-borrowed words. By the time it gets back to Japan it will be something like Land-Land and will mean something different again like monsters.
Pretty amazing.