Quote:
Originally Posted by erneiz_hyde
Oh...OK, let's see.
Japanese kanji for OreImo is 俺妹, "Ore" is a masculine way to address a first person, and the "imouto" part can be read as just "imo". To those who don't know, it may come off as meaning "I(masculine) am a sister", but everyone in the otakudom knows what it actually means.
Btw, take this example:Boku ha tomodachi ga sukunai 僕は友達が少ない = haganai
This shortening probably wouldn't make sense to most other people (outside otakudom) because they're not using the core words that actually have independent meanings. In English, it's probably like shortening "I don't have many friends" to "Dovriends" instad of "Don'tFriend" or other words that slightly makes more sense.
The Japanese are good at making these nonsensical yet widely used shortenings. The "catchiness" of the pronounciation is probably also a factor.
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In English, it would be more like acronyms or shorthand abbreviations. For example, Shin Sekai Yori is shortened to SSY, or Battlestar Galactica is shortened to Battlestar or Galactica, or BSG. Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition Tournament Edition is shortened to SSF4AETE, New Super Mario Bros. U becomes NSMBU. Troubled asset relief program becomes TARP. That kind of thing. There's no hard and fast rule, but the similarity is there.
We don't usually go for shorthand like the Asian languages do (combining words into "new" ones). And we certainly can't capture the multiple meanings quite like they can (our language lacks the character language combinations and our mnemonics aren't as good). But to say the English language is overloaded with abbreviations is an understatement.
