is a form of Japanese Internet slang which first appeared around 2009. It involves taking sentences which are grammatically

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

and stripping away the

hiragana is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrast ...

and

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived f ...

, leaving only the

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

behind, which causes the resultant sentence to appear

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

. The phenomenon has spread to China, where Chinese speakers can often guess the meaning of the sentences despite not knowing Japanese. Taiwan's Central News Agency has hailed pseudo-Chinese as a new platform for Sino-Japanese communication. This style of writing can lead to idiosyncratic word choices. For example, 非常感謝 (much appreciated) may be rendered as 大変感謝; while 感謝 (gratitude) is common to both languages, 非常 is used as an intensifier in Chinese whereas 大変 serves the same purpose in Japanese. Commentators on

Baidu Baidu, Inc. ( ; , meaning "hundred times") is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products and artificial intelligence (AI), headquartered in Beijing's Haidian District. It is one of the l ...

have noticed the similarity between pseudo-Chinese and

Classical Chinese Classical Chinese, also known as Literary Chinese (古文 ''gǔwén'' "ancient text", or 文言 ''wényán'' "text speak", meaning "literary language/speech"; modern vernacular: 文言文 ''wényánwén'' "text speak text", meaning "literar ...

, with such expressions as 貴方明日何処行？ (Where will you go tomorrow?). This is not a coincidence; the

Japanese writing system The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana. Kana itself consists of a pair of syllabaries: hiragana, used primarily for native or naturalised Japanese ...

arose as an adaptation of

classical Chinese Classical Chinese, also known as Literary Chinese (古文 ''gǔwén'' "ancient text", or 文言 ''wényán'' "text speak", meaning "literary language/speech"; modern vernacular: 文言文 ''wényánwén'' "text speak text", meaning "literar ...

writing.

References

{{Internet slang variants Japanese-based pidgins and creoles Chinese Internet slang Kanji Languages attested from the 2000s Internet memes introduced in 2009

See also

References