Single Letters As Abbreviations
Many single letters of the Latin alphabet have names that resemble the pronunciations of Japanese words or characters. Japanese people use them in contexts such as advertising to catch the reader's attention. Other uses of letters include abbreviations of spellings of words. Here are some examples:
- E: 良い (ii; the word for "good" in Japanese). The letter appears in the name of the company e-homes.
- J: The first letter of "Japan" as in J.League, J-Phone.
- Q: The kanji 九 ("nine") have the reading kyū. Japanese "Dial Q2" premium-rate telephone numbers start with 0990.
- S, M: used for sadism and masochism respectively, often referring to mild personality traits rather than sexual fetishes. "SM" is also used for sadomasochism, instead of "S&M" used in English, in a more sexual context.
- W: The English word "double." Japanese people sometimes pronounce the letter "double." For example, ”Wデート” (W deeto) means "double date(s)"; "WW Burger" from Freshness Burger has double beef and double cheese.
Read more about this topic: Japanese Abbreviated And Contracted Words
Famous quotes containing the words single and/or letters:
“Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—
which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.”
—Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)
“Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)