Twenty Words for the Japanese Web

GeoCities.us » Tokyo » Shibuya

言
葉

Twenty Words
for the Japanese Web, with kana,
rōmaji and a note on each

Japanese home pages have a furniture all their own, and you'll recognize it sooner than you think. A great many of the words are borrowed from English and written in katakana, so the trick is often just to say them out loud. The rest are worth learning. For a word written in kanji, I've given the kana reading underneath. Long vowels are marked with a bar, as in kōshin.

← Back to Nihongo on the Net

1	インターネット intānetto · the Internet Often cut down to ネット (netto), "the Net," the same way we do.
2	ホームページ hōmupēji · home page In Japan this usually means a whole site, not just its front page. "Watashi no hōmupēji" is everything you've made.
3	パソコン pasokon · personal computer Shortened from pāsonaru konpyūtā. Japanese loves to clip a long two-part borrowing down to the front of each half and stick them together.
4	メール mēru · e-mail The formal word is 電子メール (でんしメール, denshi mēru), "electronic mail," but nobody says the whole thing.
5	リンク rinku · link Japanese has no separate L sound, so English L and R both come out as R. Hence rinku.
6	リンクフリー rinku furī · "link free" A notice on many Japanese pages meaning you may link here without asking first. Pages without it often expect a polite e-mail before you link. Ask.
7	相互リンクそうごリンク sōgo rinku · reciprocal links "Mutual links": a link exchange. You link to me, I link to you, and we both say so.
8	掲示板けいじばん keijiban · bulletin board Originally the board on the wall at school or the train station. On a home page it's a message board where visitors leave notes and the owner answers, and on Japanese pages it's more common than a guestbook.
9	ゲストブック gesutobukku · guestbook Exactly what you'd guess, once you sound it out.
10	管理人かんりにん kanrinin · the keeper of a site In everyday life, the caretaker of an apartment building. On a home page, the person who runs it. I like it better than "webmaster."
11	更新こうしん kōshin · update Look for 更新履歴 (こうしんりれき, kōshin rireki), the list of what changed and when, usually near the top of the front page.
12	工事中こうじちゅう kōjichū · under construction The same word that's on the road signs. Japanese pages are under construction just as often as ours.
13	アクセスカウンター akusesu kauntā · hit counter "Access counter." Often just カウンター.
14	キリ番きりばん kiriban · a round number on the counter From kiri no ii bangō, a nice even number: 1000, 5000, 7777. On many pages, the visitor who lands on one is asked to report it on the bulletin board, and sometimes gets a small drawing as a prize.
15	壁紙かべがみ kabegami · wallpaper Literally the paper on a wall. Used for background images on a page and for the picture on your computer's desktop.
16	素材そざい sozai · materials Raw materials, as in cooking or sewing. On the Web it means free graphics for building pages: backgrounds, lines, buttons, icons. A 素材 site is a free graphics site, and most have rules about credit and linking, just like ours.
17	顔文字かおもじ kaomoji · face characters Little faces made of characters, read right side up instead of sideways: (^_^) is a smile, (^^;) is a nervous laugh with a bead of sweat, and (T_T) is crying.
18	文字化けもじばけ mojibake · garbled characters The whole reason for the front page. Characters in disguise.
19	文字コードもじコード moji kōdo · character code What we'd call the character set: Shift_JIS, EUC-JP, JIS. If a Japanese page says to set your 文字コード, it's telling you which one to pick from the browser menu.
20	全角 · 半角ぜんかく · はんかく zenkaku, hankaku · full-width, half-width A Japanese character takes a full square; an English letter takes half of one. Japanese computers can also type English letters and numbers in full-width form, which look the same to you and are completely different characters to the computer. If an e-mail address on a Japanese page won't work, this is often why.

Something I've gotten wrong, or a word you'd add? Write me at [email protected]. I'd rather be corrected than be wrong in public, which as a translator is the whole job.