Original sense of “loose strip of tissue”; the sense of “pointed corner of nail” is modern, and is connected with the reanalysis, due to stockings catching or “hanging” on the nail.
You have to look at the etymology. Definitions are just what they currently mean, after people got their terrible little paws on the words and did things like added an “n” to roma.
Yup, I suppose it was wrong of me to say they have nothing to do with hanging, although it’s not where the word originally came from; I guess in most cases where a word is changed through reanalysis, it’s something that at least makes sense
Ok, I see what you mean. But that’s still a change that makes sense, isn’t it? You can see where the “ang” became “hang”. Languages evolve naturally over time.
But that’s why I asked about loanwords specifically. They’re usually relatively recent additions to a language, and I just can’t see a word being randomly changed when it’s origin is an existing language that anyone can point to and say “this is how it’s supposed to be”.
So with “romaji”, although a lot of people might think that it comes from “roman characters”, I feel like there’s always going to be someone who knows more Japanese and is like “no it doesn’t”. I just can’t imagine “romanji” catching on as long as Japanese exists. (at least in modern times, a few thousand years later, who knows)
(but i’m definitely still approaching this from the viewpoint of someone who knows “hangnail” exists and “romanji” doesn’t i’m just not good at imagining the future )
Reanalyses of loanwords aren’t that uncommon in etymology, the most famous example probably being the good old hamburger being reanalyzed as consisting of the two parts ham and burger, which ushered in the creation of the cheeseburger.
Examples exist in other languages too, albeit less famous ones, e.g. French choucroute (“sauerkraut”, lit. chou “cabbage” + croûte “crust”) as a reanalysis of German Sauerkraut via the Alsatian dialect or German and Dutch Hängematte and hangmat (“hammock”, lit. hang mat as the Dutch suggests) as a reanalysis of the Spanish hamaca.
People like to play around with this too and “invent” folk etymologies based on similarities, e.g. the theory that ぐっすり is a Japanese reanalysis of “good sleep” even though the word is attested as early as 1725 before any significant language contact between Japanese and English existed.
Since the reanalysis usually takes place in the language itself (i.e. in Japanese), it would take Japanese speakers to start saying ローマン字 instead of ローマ字 for it to truly catch on since romaji is very limited in its scope as a loanword in English and is pretty much a technical term, which people get wrong often in all kinds of disciplines and contexts.
Woah. I just realized that hamburgers… aren’t actually made out of ham lol
Thanks for the input! Real interesting stuff. Makes sense that romaji won’t change since it’s pretty much only used when talking about Japanese, as opposed to common/colloquial words.
I assume since I was the first to respond, this is a reference to my and other initial posts?
What, we were supposed to infer that romaji meant “loanword” even when he was saying “why didn’t they use katakana?” even though it uses katakana? Without even getting into the “romanji / romaji” thing.
I think you’re leaning too heavily on the benefit of the rest of the conversation.
It probably won’t change anytime soon just as you said…unless we want it to. The fact that we are talking about and there are various references scattered around (along with a frequent mistake) sort gives it an existence, at least on the urban dictionary level …slang is still language, right?
Interesting how etymology just does what it what it wants, it’s usually a matter of convenience. Consider all the katakana that sound little resemblance to their English or loanword pronunciation that are already fully integrated. The language being loaned from does not need to change in order for for this be accepted…otherwise I’d have to say マクドナルド which I don’t want to.
This is interesting because it’s not quite the same pronunciation, is it still considered a 同音異字? I like to think that someone of high status made a mistake long ago and everyone was too afraid to correct them.
One of my students had one of the novels on their desk the other day, and the full title Re:Zero - Starting Life in a Different World From Zero is written in English with the kanji ‘Re:ゼロから始める異世界生活’ underneath it. I’m not sure which counts as the ‘official’ title but yeah it’s a longer title than just Re:Zero/Re:ゼロ (although I’ve never heard anyone except my student use the full thing, so it’s not too important).
You’re right that languages can change in any number of ways, but the comparison doesn’t really work because romaji isn’t a Japanese loanword in English in the regular sense, like karaoke or tsunami, i.e. a Japanese word that has been fully incorporated into the English lexicon to describe a concept that exists outside of the context of Japan.
The word romaji, on the other hand, is a technical term (as a loanword in English) that is only used to describe Latin characters used in the Japanese language specifically and its use is therefore restricted to a very small subset of the English-speaking language community. If English speakers come across a word like Япония, and they can’t read Russian, for example, they wouldn’t ask how that’s spelled or transcribed in romaji.
This happens a lot, especially in manga, and it’s kind of just a playful way of giving readers both the “meaning” of a phrase through the kanji, and what’s actually being said through the furigana.
Just to give another example of this happening, “A Certain Scientific Railgun” uses とある科学の超電磁砲 as the title with kanji, but then puts レールガン in furigana to show the reading of the made-up 四字熟語. It doesn’t mean that the kana shows any kind of accepted reading of the kanji, it’s just an artistic choice on the part of the author. You might think of it as that the author wants you to have the sense or idea of “ultra-electric-magnet-gun” but pronounce it as レールガン when you see it in the text.
Yeah, I can see what inspired the question. It’s a good reminder to always go back to the context in these kinds of questions. More context always helps.
This question certainly had more context than others though. Some people seem to be allergic to providing any context at all.
I’m not disagreeing, you are correct…that was just a general observation from what you quoted. Outside this community, no one knows or cares really. But it’s still very curious that this minor mispelling/pronunciation has semblance outside the the WK forums and gives it a seed of a etymology split that will probably go no where…it’s just a funny existence, that’s all.
No actually, your posts were not the ones that prompted my reaction. Your reply was courteous and your “BTW” concise and to the point.
Some other intevrentions focused more on the mistakes than on the question though. It’s very common to see someone ask a genuine question on a technical forum and have to defend him/herself on details while the main point is cast aside. It’s happened to me and I empathized with OP for that. I think that, in general, people should go a bit easier on people making technical mistakes in their questions. Didn’t want to insist too much either which is why I kept my post to less than two lines, but I didn’t want you to have the false impression I was referring to your post
I think it’s really obvious that I should have just posted the picture first. That was everyone could see the kanji with an english word on top. I thought to myself, “how would they know to pronounce it as the english word with the kanji right there?”
Looking back, it now seems quite obvious that this is an american service, and Japanese people would be looking at their own title slide (obviously with katakana), but that didn’t jump out at me yesterday.
i’m just not good at imagining the future 
…slang is still language, right?
