| >Hiya...
| >>
| >>How would you say 'mother' in the affectionate?  Somehow, 'okaachan'
| >>doesn't seem right, but I'm not sure...
| >
| >
| >Believe it or not? 'Mama' would work best. 'Kaachan' is also correct.
|
|
<snip the words as they aren't relevant and the suggestion given is good
enough as is>
|
| 	Now here is my question for the list.  Why on earth do you
| people wish to use
| words from a language that you don't understand?!  If you don't know the
| words, will your reader?  What is the point of writing a fic that
| over half
| the phrases are lost to your readers level of comprehension?!
| Isn't the point
| of the written word to communicate?  If that is your aim and you wish to
| communicate with your readers, then do so in ENGLISH!

So... what's Shampoo going to call Ranma instead of "ai ren" and say when
she glomps him instead of "wo ai ni"? If we can get HER meaning in Chinese,
why can't we get the characters' meaning in the occasional Japanese word?
"Sensei", "sempai", and the dozen or so other nomenclatural suffixes that
Japanese is peppered with can do a lot to indicate a character's respect or
lack thereof to another character... this might show up in the bulk of the
story as well, but it's something that would be said in the situation... why
not say it? To say nothing of the Japanese words for which there is no ready
English equivalent... "shogi" and "shoji" and "okonomiyaki" to name a few.
Japanese is a much richer language than English is, and the occasional
Japanese word will work around having to explain the concept in a few dozen
English ones. And then there's the phonetic quality of the language...
"Ranma no BAKA!" explodes off the tongue, while "Ranma, you JERK!" falls a
bit flatter, at least in my own humble opinion. I'll admit that in some
fics, like "Narrabundah 1/2" (in places), the Japanese is thick enough that
it is a barrier to comprehension. But the occasional word here and there
isn't all too bad a thing. Glossaries help, certainly, for the more
unfamiliar words, but there are otaku primers out there (Douglas Helm has
one archived that I know of) with some of the basic familial terms and a few
others as well.

--G. Falconar

Who agrees you shouldn't go looking for strange Japanese words to put in
fics, but if it's in your vocabulary and it helps the context, why not use
it? And obfuscatory endeavors permeate the linguistics of the King's English
as well, you know.