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That and it's apparently making fun of Japanese accent ("sarariman"). It's a pity that this is the top comment on HN right now.
by pesfandiar 6y ago
That and it's apparently making fun of Japanese accent ("sarariman"). It's a pity that this is the top comment on HN right now.
- subsubzero 6y agoApparently you don't know about katakana, its a form of the Japanese alphabet that is specifically used for foreign words translated to Japanese. The pronunciation of these words sounds similar to their foreign counterparts. think sararimam == salaryman, hanba-gu == hamburger, terebijon == television and so on. katakana - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana
- ezoe 6y agoIf he really knows kana, he should write it as sarari-man as the third vowel is long vowel.
- colejohnson66 6y agoIs it a hyphen? Or would it be saraiiman? I actually don’t know.
- panda88888 6y agoYour form is correct based on faint recollection of what I learned in college Japanese class.
- ezoe 6y agoIt shall be ー, but if we use that, we should also use rest of the kanas too.
- jbay808 6y agoIt's clearly a direct transcription, rather than a translation, of サラリーマン. I doubt any mockery is intended.
- pesfandiar 6y agoThanks for clarifying that. I might have been wrong about their intention then, but mockery seemed plausible given they were also painting a very stereotypical picture of a business meeting.
- microtherion 6y agoThanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt! As for stereotyping… maybe! But isn't "laughing a proposal out of a room" a stereotype as well?
- julianmarq 6y ago> but mockery seemed plausible How about we stop assuming mockery just because it might seem plausible and instead we lean toward "no offense intended" by default?
- mparkms 6y agoSarariman (adapted from the English salary man) is the Japanese term for white collar worker.
- krapp 6y agoNative English speakers tend to just say "salaryman" when speaking to other English speakers. Adopting a faux Japanese accent, particularly in print, is extremely cringeworthy.
- anchpop 6y agoSarariman is a Japanese word, the original commenter wasn't adopting a false Japanese accent. Here's an article from the economist using the term: https://www.economist.com/special-report/1999/11/25/who-wants-to-be-a-sarariman https://www.economist.com/special-report/1999/11/25/who-want...
- earthboundkid 6y agoI lived in Japan for years. I have never seen English speakers write "Sarariman" instead of "Salaryman" when talking about the phenomenon.
- microtherion 6y agoYes, my intent was not to mock a Japanese accent, but to adopt what seemed to me the most plausible spelling. In this particular case, the Japanese concept has far eclipsed the original English word, and the term was more or less a Japanese creation in the first place[0], so that's why I spelled it that way. In other cases, the English spelling is still dominant, so using a back-transliterated katakana spelling (e.g. "Rabu Hoteru" instead of "Love Hotel") would be just weird. [0] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=salary+man%2Csalaryman%2Csarariman&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Csalary%20man%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Csalaryman%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Csarariman%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Csalary%20man%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Csalaryman%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Csarariman%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=salary+man%2Cs...
- 6y ago
- ThrowawayR2 6y agoThat's the correct romanization of the Japanese word サラリーマン, which, according to the Wikipedia article on it, is a loanword whose usage dates back to before the 1930s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaryman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaryman