I am on level 18 right now and just came across 叩頭 (koutou), which means to bow, and the hint is you tap 叩 your head 頭 on the floor. I suddenly had this image in my head of a US Soldier in 1949 learning this word and bringing it back to the US as “kowtow” where it becomes “to grovel at someone’s feet.” So I did what I do and chatted with ChatGPT about it. GPT informed me that I was almost spot on. Kowtow does come to the West from 叩頭, but it came in the 1800s from China, where it is pronounced closer to kautau.
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American English uses the word “skosh,” which is a loan word derived from 少し(すこし) that soldiers brought back to the USA.
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布団 kinda pisses me off. The borrowing is fine, but I’ve always heard it said like fu-TAN which throws me off 100% of the time in reviews. Everytime I’m like is it ふたん or ふとん.
It’s ふとん. Like how we spell it not how we say it
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I can’t believe I didn’t google that! I thought they sounded so familiar 
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It’s “ketou” actually, but close enough.
Mostly what bugs me is that it’s used for something which is absolutely not a futon.
And then there’s “sa-kee”, and “kamah-kazee”…
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The Wiktionary generally has pretty decent etymological data:
From either Cantonese 叩頭 / 叩头 (kau3 tau4) or Mandarin 叩頭 / 叩头 (kòutóu). Literally, “knock head”.
I point that out because I wouldn’t really trust a language model not to make up nonsense in this situation.
Oh, what does it describe?
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In the UK, Australia (and I presume other English speaking countries), a futon is something like this (I had one growing up for a while)
so basically a sofa bed, very different to 布団 here in Japan (mattress is a lot thicker and usually larger than Japanese, even ignoring the sofa frame)
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There is 磕头 (kētóu), though ke, as Pinyin, could sound a little different than expected (also from the sound of Romaji). (And I have seen this variant in Chinese context, so I can recall.)
The dictionary says also written, but Wikipedia says its closer to Chinese 叩头 (kòutóu).
【叩头】 【叩頭】 [708k+] to kowtow (traditional greeting, esp. to a superior, involving kneeling and pressing one’s forehead to the ground)/also written 磕頭|磕头[ke1 tou2]
Wikipedia mentioned 額ずく. I learned this one recently and can’t really remember the Kanji reading.
TIL about western-style futons.
I don’t really know about skosh, but I learned it years ago from WaniKani.
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And of course the absolute monstrosity that is care-i-yolky, I mean karaoke.
But may the language without loanword sin cast the first stone I suppose. There’s a reason I’m more afraid of katakana text than kanji text. I just think karaoke is fun because it’s a double butchering, orchestra->オケ->カラオケ->karaoke
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Yep, I realized this recently. But almost no American friend I’ve tried to share this trivia with even knows the word. 
The only ones who do are pretty old.
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I would think the number of English loan words used in Japanese where the way it is pronounced is not the same is much higher. No-one here pronounces my name the way Enlgish speakers do 
beer → ビール
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Exactly. I was in Okinawa in the Marines in the early 1980s and so many people were bragging about the fuu tahn they had just bought, and they all looked like little sofas to me.
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