Most recent Japanese word you've learned?

ヒトカゲ - charmander
フシギダネ - bulbasaur
ゼニガメ - squirtle

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Japanese Pokémon names are so wonderfully uninspired, it’s beautiful :joy:

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You mean baby turtle isn’t a good name for Squirtle?!

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“What’ll we name the plant dino?”

“It’s a mystery, isn’t it?”

“Oh that’s a good one!”

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Hmm? フシギダネ is pretty clever, no?

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Also just learned that charmeleon is リザード. It’s just. Lizard. This must be how Chinese people feel when they see white people with stupid kanji tattoos.

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ヒトカゲ is literally just salamander too!

I totally knew that and didn’t get told yesterday.

EDIT: I just stuck リザード in Jisho and the second translation is Lizard by King Crimson. Lizard gang rise up

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You know, it took me until just now to realise there’s a pun in there. Yeah, that one’s pretty clever :smile: But looking at the whole list it just feels like the Japanese names are especially on the nose, with such names as “lizard”, two variations on “ghost”, “sand”, “fire” and “thunder”. Maybe it just stands out more? I guess English naming does the same in some instances, just translating something (badly, often) to another language and calling it a day.

I guess that could be a pun too, seeing as 蜥蜴トカゲ is lizard, and 火蜥蜴ヒトカゲ is pretty much “fire lizard” (or, well, salamander)

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I totally believe you

Me over here forgetting that King Crimson is an actual band and immediately thinking of Jojo’s…

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I haven’t looked at all of them, just was looking at the ones there, so yeah, I can’t speak to the rest.

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Wait 'till you hear about Dio :wink:

JoJo’s is full of references to music, from Speedwagon to Killer Queen to Purple Haze, and way more

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At this point, I think Jojo is ruined for me by the circlejerk over ‘is that a Jojo reference?’ that’s everywhere. Especially since my musical taste heavily overlaps with Jojo.

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Oh I know, that was made pretty clear after Robert E.O. Speedwagon.

Flacid pancake>>>>>>>>>>>>>

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I think they’re using a pun-in-pun tactic. It seems obvious, but then when you dig 2 levels under you go “ooooh…!”

For instance, I used to think Bulbasaur is actually フシギダマ (mystery bulb) which made more sense to me. However, the original Bulbasaur line names are like quite the thing
フシギダネ - Bulbasaur
フシギソウ - Ivysaur
フシギバナ - Venusaur
They went from “kind of sort of mysterious” to a 花 + だな pun

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I mean just in case anyone isn’t aware of what the pun for フシギダネ is.

You can imagine it as either
不思議だね - mysterious, isn’t it
or
不思議種 - mysterious seed (rendaku of たね, which happens in other words too)

The other ones then play out the plant life cycle obviously.

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不思議だねぇ
不思議そう!

The last one just seems to crack out of the loop.

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Dio is quite good. Now I am interested in the playlist / mix.

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時差ぼけ (じさぼけ) - jetlag

Learned from my tutor, lol

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人見知り - shyness

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I finally learned wanikani vocab!

yaaaaaay! All the efforts in those two years since I started wk finally got me to this point!

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