Chokuegambo
January 4th, 2006 by quaisiIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I was having an IM conversation with a friend and he gave me a list of words which have no equivalent in any other language. I put this to the back of my mind and then came acros BBC News 100 things we didn`t know this time last year.
No. 99: The Japanese word “chokuegambo” describes the wish that there were more designer-brand shops on a given street.
This seems typical and credible in the Louis Vuitton obsessed nation but Reiko had never heard of it and neither had her sister. When I mentioned it they answered me there`s no such word as if where the hell had this foreigner cooked up this bizarre word? Any explanations?
Tags: Japan, Osaka, Asia, Quaisi, Kansai, Expat, English, Japanese, Chokuegambo
January 5th, 2006 at 1:51 pm
Oh god, don’t let my Linguistics professor see this blog. She would flip out. I think this is am example of a non-japanese person using knowledge that may or may not be correct and knows that very few people who read it will be able to tell if its right or wrong. Sort of like how people think the Inuit have 100 words for snow, just because snow has so much significance in their lives. It’s not true, but to a non-inuit, it sounds plausible.
I’ll ask some Japanese I know. It might be a dialect issue. Who know, maybe even an Ainu phrase.
January 7th, 2006 at 5:57 pm
different dialect? slang amongst friends?
January 9th, 2006 at 3:14 am
chokuegambo = 直営願望
Perhaps…
“chokueiganbo” is slang.
It is only used by a few woman.
January 10th, 2006 at 7:08 am
My guess is it is slang used by teenagers. And so probably isn’t in the dictionary or in use by people other than teenagers.