Outdated Japanese Vocabulary and カタカナ English

Some vocabulary that is a part of official learning material seems to be slightly outdated.

Like ワプロ or 皆勤賞.

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Isn’t ワープロ now the standard word used for things like Microsoft Word?

From it’s weblio entry:

ワープロソフトとは、文書を作成するためのソフトウェアの総称である。

Edit: at the end it also mentions it origins:

なお、ワープロソフトの普及以前は、ワープロ専用ハードウェアである「ワープロ専用機」が主流だった。富士通OASYSは、もともとワープロ専用機として登場したブランドである。ワープロ専用機は、パソコンおよびワープロソフトの普及によって衰退していき、2000年前後時点各社から生産終了発表されることとなった。

Too lazy to remove the links.

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to be fair, the first book i bought in college (1998 to be specific) for learning japanese was a book from Japan Times and the audio came on cassette tapes and referenced 1980s-mid 90s tech constantly lol i still go back to it even though quite a bit is outdated

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Japanese husband says no, it is quite antique now :rofl:

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That’s good to know! :joy:

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I think there might be some miscommunication. Microsoft Word isn’t going anywhere. Presumably he doesn’t mean that that is old fashioned.

I imagine he’s thinking of ワープロ専用機.

In any case, we use “wapuro” to talk about romaji, so there’s some value in knowing the word.

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What do you mean by that, I think I don’t understand that exactly.

Actually at the moment I have to either buy a version of Microsoft office or to think about an alternative, and there is 一朗 I heard.

Is it wrong that I still want to learn them? Outdated as they are, if a Japanese person recognizes them, then I should know those words.

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I think knowing about history is important to understand the current situation, it just sounds outdated…

The term ワープロソフト is still used to describe the type of program like Microsoft Word… maybe not universally, but like, you can find it in product listings for word processing programs. So the label and the type of program aren’t old fashioned. That was what I was saying.

Maybe I misunderstood the claim. If he wasn’t saying anything about ワープロソフト then my bad.

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You can still buy cassette tape players new in my area in Japan, so if you’re interested in them, I don’t see the harm in learning them.

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Fair enough

Oh, and one for the “outdated English but not outdated Japanese” is fax machine. Still faxing things regularly, they are.

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even though for average americans that is outdated…i swear to god, the medical community is the only thing keeping those alive in the US

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Are you working in a museum :joy:

Btw out of 30 kids from primary school only we and one other family still has a landline telephone (Tokyo).

I love fax but only used it about three times, I would also like to have a Commodore 64 again :heart_eyes:

Hey now, if you have to send any kind of documents to the gov, I highly recommend it. Shortest wait times

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「事情があって学校に行けない不登校の生徒もいます。休むことは必ずしも悪いことではないと考え皆勤賞をやめました」

Sure, regular families don’t have fax and landline telephones are only decreasing.

But Japanese companies (and public offices) use fax machines like there is no tomorrow. Pretty much any copying machine in this country is a fax machine. Just ask anyone who works in a Japanese company other than a fancy startup.

All my 名刺 so far were proudly stating my departments’ fax numbers, lol

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In all the companies I worked for I sent a fax only once, it was an international competition and the secretary did not really know how to do it.
I am bit surprised that fax is still used, also in the company of my husband they don’t use it. Maybe it depends on the business.
For legal issues it is a good option indeed because there is a written proof of the transaction.

Word isn’t, but I thought they just meant that in general use you would probably normally just say, for example「これをワードで書いてください」instead of ワープロ, no? Or ドックス :smiley: