# 8 English Words From Japanese (tycoon, honcho, skosh, kudzu, ramen, futon, rickshaw, and sudoku)



## takashi0930

'Tycoon', 'Skosh', & 6 More English Words From Japanese

The above article is from Merriam-Webster's website. It talks about 8 English borrowed words from Japanese: *tycoon, honcho, skosh, kudzu, ramen, futon, rickshaw, and sudoku.*

My American friends say they've heard of or used them except for "kudzu". How about British people (and other native speakers)? Do you use these words? I'm especially interested in "*skosh*".


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## Packard

I did not realize that these words were Japanese in origin.  

I hear "skosh" used to mean "a little" in American English.

Woman to seamstress:  _These pants are a bit too tight; can you let them out a skosh?
_
I hear of "kudzu" used as a reference to nuisance plants or metaphorically to refer to anything that is invasive and annoying.


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## heypresto

Personally, I've not come across 'skosh' or 'kudzo' before.


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## Egmont

I've heard all of them, probably used all of them, certainly could use all of them if the opportunity came up. (At least three are in my home right now: ramen, a futon, and sudoku. Whether or not we have a honcho here is open to debate. I wouldn't say we have a tycoon, though one or two people who might fit that description have visited us in the recent past. I'm sure we don't have kudzu or a rickshaw. And I have at least two suits that were altered for a skosh more room in the seat.)


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## Packard

heypresto said:


> Personally, I've not come across 'skosh' or 'kudzo' before.



I would say that it is only in the past five to ten years that I've heard these words.  "Skosh" mostly on TV, but I've adopted it.

"Kudzu" was considered a beneficial plant that quickly covered open ground and prevented erosion. I looked it up when a comic strip of that name began to be printed in our local paper in the 1980s.

Kudzu (comic strip) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

_*Kudzu*_ was a daily comic strip by Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonistDoug Marlette about rural Southerners. Distributed byUniversal Press Syndicate, the strip ran from 1981 to 2007.


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## takashi0930

Thank you, everyone. It's so interesting. I didn't know the comis strip "Kudzu"!

Let me confirm one thing.
"A skosh" is used to mean "a little", but "skosh" (without "a") isn't used to mean "little", is it? I mean,
You can say "There is a skosh water." to mean "There is a little water."
But you can't say " There is skosh water." to mean "There is little water." Is that correct?


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## takashi0930

Also, can "skosh" also mean "a few", or is it only used to mean "a little"? (I'm wondering about this because in Japanese "sukoshi", from which "skosh" came, can mean both "a little" and "a few".)


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## heypresto

Packard said:


> "Skosh" mostly on TV, but I've adopted it.



I think I'll adopt it too, and see if it catches on.


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## JulianStuart

(Sukoshi is the conventional transliteration into Roman characters, even though the u is ~silent even in Japanese).
I have learnt Japanese and spent many years with a Japanese Americam wife and family.  They have been using skosh for a long time and only ever as a noun. However, as with many borrowed words, the speakers of the borrowing  language often mangle the original pronunciation or grammatical use of the word I've not heard skosh used as an adjective even outside this Japanese American setting, but have indeed heard it more often recently.  A parallel in English  is the word "tad" - also meaning a bit or a little, and some do use it as an adjective in "a tad bit" eek:


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## Sparky Malarky

Don't listen to those Limeys and Yankees!  Kudzu is rampant in the southern US, where it "eats" whole fields, including trees, covering them completely.  It's an invasive plant.

http://www.jjanthony.com/kudzu/images/cabin.jpg


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## heypresto

It looks delicious.


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## Miss Julie

JulianStuart said:


> (Sukoshi is the conventional transliteration into Roman characters, even though the u is ~silent even in Japanese).



I've never understood the use of 'u' in Japanese words...if the 'u' is not supposed to be pronounced, why is it there?


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## Packard

Miss Julie said:


> I've never understood the use of 'u' in Japanese words...if the 'u' is not supposed to be pronounced, why is it there?



For the same reason "gnomes" love the "g"?


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## Miss Julie

Packard said:


> For the same reason "gnomes" love the "g"?



Perhaps, but this extra 'u' serves only to confuse people into thinking it should be pronounced, thus they mispronounce the word that contains it.


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## JulianStuart

Miss Julie said:


> Perhaps, but this extra 'u' serves only to confuse people into thinking it should be pronounced, thus they mispronounce the word that contains it.


The Japanese language is based on syllables not letters and the characters represent syllables. The characters are either vowel sounds alone, or consonant+vowel : a, e, i etc or su fu mi ka. Single consonants don't exist (except for terminal n) So, to write the sound of skosh, they must write su-ko-shi.  This almost loss of u is about the only irregularity in their phonetic spelling system.  (You should hear the questions they have about English "spelling")


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## Glenfarclas

takashi0930 said:


> 'Tycoon', 'Skosh', & 6 More English Words From Japanese
> 
> The above article is from Merriam-Webster's website. It talks about 8 English borrowed words from Japanese: *tycoon, honcho, skosh, kudzu, ramen, futon, rickshaw, and sudoku.*
> 
> My American friends say they've heard of or used them except for "kudzu". How about British people (and other native speakers)? Do you use these words? I'm especially interested in "*skosh*".



I am familiar with all of these.  Of them:

*Honcho*:  I would have guessed that this was from Spanish.
*Kudzu*:  I'm familiar with the invasive plant, and also the use of kudzu starch in cooking.
*Skosh*:  I don't use it, and would have thought that it came from Yiddish.


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## Hermione Golightly

I know them all except _skosh,_ which I've never heard of and I too thought honcho was Spanish. I don't know how I know kudzu; I must have read about its invasive menace in the USA.


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## Miss Julie

JulianStuart said:


> The Japanese language is based on syllables not letters and the characters represent syllables. The characters are either vowel sounds alone, or consonant+vowel : a, e, i etc or su fu mi ka. Single consonants don't exist (except for terminal n) So, to write the sound of skosh, they must write su-ko-shi.  This almost loss of u is about the only irregularity in their phonetic spelling system.  (You should hear the questions they have about English "spelling")



I'm still baffled. For example, there have been a few Japanese baseball players in the U.S. with the first name of _Kosuke_. If I hadn't been told, I would have pronounced the name as ko-SU-kay (or maybe KO-su-kay). If it did not contain the 'u', I would have most likely pronounced it correctly, KOSE-kay, the first time.


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## Packard

Glenfarclas said:


> *Skosh*:  I don't use it, and would have thought that it came from Yiddish.



Until this thread that was what I thought.


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## Copperknickers

takashi0930 said:


> 'Tycoon', 'Skosh', & 6 More English Words From Japanese
> 
> The above article is from Merriam-Webster's website. It talks about 8 English borrowed words from Japanese: *tycoon, honcho, skosh, kudzu, ramen, futon, rickshaw, and sudoku.*
> 
> My American friends say they've heard of or used them except for "kudzu". How about British people (and other native speakers)? Do you use these words? I'm especially interested in "*skosh*".



Have never heard of skosh or kudzu before this thread. Have only really heard 'ramen' through American tv shows, although Japanese food is starting to become popular in the UK now so I'm sure you could find it easily if you looked (sushi has been popular for a while but not so much hot dishes).


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## Hildy1

Sparky Malarky's picture of kudzu shows just what it looked like years ago when I returned for a visit to the southern United States. Kudzu, which I had never heard of when growing up there, had taken over and transformed the landscape. Since then people have, at great effort and expense, got it under control.

So if you have never heard of kudzu before, consider yourself lucky.


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## JulianStuart

Miss Julie said:


> I'm still baffled. For example, there have been a few Japanese baseball players in the U.S. with the first name of _Kosuke_. If I hadn't been told, I would have pronounced the name as ko-SU-kay (or maybe* KO-su-kay*). If it did not contain the 'u', I would have most likely pronounced it correctly, KOSE-kay, the first time.


The bold version is actually pretty close to their way - the u hasn't completely gone the syllable is just very short. Just like there is actually a sound between the s and n in _hasn't_  In our way of representing  sounds, we know what we mean by -s but the very end of the sibilant is different from the middle, and they consider it a separate "sound" - so we have words ending in an s sound using the su character that get transcribed with that u. In Japanese characters it is written ko-su-ke, with the su the same as in _sumo_, where it is not "lost". The transcription into Roman characters represents the Japanese characters, not a pronunciation aid for English speakers   However, you are obviously way ahead of others who might well say CO-sook 

Wiki has a longer list of words, but the ones in the OP are ones that might not be as recognizably Japanese as haiku, origami or bonsai


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## Miss Julie

Thanks so much, Julian...very interesting! I'm so fascinated by languages.


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## ewie

I've never heard of _skosh, kudzu_ or _ramen_.
I also imagined _honcho_ was from Spanish ... though now that I come to think about it, I don't know any Spanish word _honcho_ 
And if I'd been asked I would've said _tycoon_ was from Chinese, like _typhoon_


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## dojibear

I have heard most of these words in common use since the 1960s...except "ramen" which only became common on US grocery shelves years later, and "sudoku" which is more recent. 

I am used to "skosh" meaning a small amount (add a skosh of salt) but not a few.


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## JulianStuart

ewie said:


> I've never heard of _skosh, kudzu_ or _ramen_.
> I also imagined _honcho_ was from Spanish ... though now that I come to think about it, I don't know any Spanish word _honcho_
> And if I'd been asked I would've said _tycoon_ was from Chinese, like _typhoon_


Convergent etymology, ewie-san
Typhoon _also_ comes from Greek, apparently and also seems to be the Japanese pronunciation, while Chinese has several, I suspect.


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## Packard

ewie said:


> I've never heard of _skosh, kudzu_ or _ramen_.
> I also imagined _honcho_ was from Spanish ... though now that I come to think about it, I don't know any Spanish word _honcho_
> And if I'd been asked I would've said _tycoon_ was from Chinese, like _typhoon_



It sounds like "concho" which is from the Spanish for a stamped or shell-like metal ornament.


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## GreenWhiteBlue

I was familiar with all of the words (and knew that they came from Japanese, including "honcho") except for "skosh", which I had never encountered before today.


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## dojibear

Miss Julie said:


> I've never understood the use of 'u' in Japanese words...if the 'u' is not supposed to be pronounced, why is it there?



Be nice - they only have 5 vowels, and only 5 vowel sounds (we have more than 30 vowel sounds). Don't take one away.

In Japanese 'u' is not "never pronounced": pikachu, kigurumi, sushi, tsunami and many other words use the sound.

But it is sometimes very short. So it is the best way to spell a foreign word that has two consonants in a row. It is impossible to write two consonants in a row in Japanese (or Chinese) writing.


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## Miss Julie

GreenWhiteBlue said:


> I was familiar with all of the words (and knew that they came from Japanese, including "honcho") except for "skosh", which I had never encountered before today.



I remember "skosh" from blue jeans commercials from the 70s or 80s; perhaps they were Levi's. The tagline was something like "_they have a skosh more room in the seat_..." I hadn't encountered the word before the commercials, and I hadn't encountered it since...until today.


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## Packard

It would appear that not many WR members are former Navy.  It seems that "skosh" has been a part of the military slang (USA) since the end of WWII.

Naval Terminology, Jargon and Slang FAQ

Between Skivvy Folder and Skunk, and it appears to be used to mean "little" and "few":

*Skosh – Pronounced with a long ‘o’. From the Japanese sukoshi, literally 'small' or 'little'. The F-5 was long known as the Skoshi Tiger. (1) Little or low, as in "They better get that foul deck cleared; Dave's coming in skosh fuel." (2) Fast, or quickly, as in "We need to get this job done most skosh."
*
This is the F-5 Tiger.  I cannot see why it would be called Skoshi Tiger though.


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## dojibear

Packard said:


> This is the F-5 Tiger. I cannot see why it would be called Skoshi Tiger though.



Maybe it is because the F-5 was slimmer and lighter than the primary US fighter jets in the 1970s.

It was purchased by many other countries as their primary fighter jet. For many decades the T-38 trainer version (no guns, no bombs) was the most popular plane for military executives to fly cross-country as transportation. While president, George Bush flew one and landed it on an aircraft carrier. I flew the T-38 in pilot school and loved it.

Maybe the military is where I picked up "skosh" too.


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## Packard

Surprisingly, the original "Sparrow Project" became the "Skoshi Tiger Project" and apparently was an official Naval military program:

F-5C/D Skoshi Tiger

(2nd paragraph down):

The F-5C was the designation given to the modified F-5A's that were sent to Southeast Asia during the mid-60's for the Skoshi Tiger program, a combat evaluation of the F-5 in Vietnam. The name is a corruption of "Sukoshi Tiger" (Japanese for "Little Tiger"). The Skoshi Tiger Program was originally known as the Sparrow Hawk Program. Project Sparrow Hawk at Eglin AFB, Florida had proven that the F-5 was a capable fighter-bomber. The primary modification from the F-5A was the addition of an in-flight refueling [IFR] probe to the F-5C.


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## JulianStuart

Packard said:


> It would appear that not many WR members are former Navy.  It seems that "skosh" has been a part of the military slang (USA) since the end of WWII.
> 
> Naval Terminology, Jargon and Slang FAQ
> 
> Between Skivvy Folder and Skunk, and it appears to be used to mean "little" and "few":
> 
> *Skosh – Pronounced with a long ‘o’. From the Japanese sukoshi, literally 'small' or 'little'. The F-5 was long known as the Skoshi Tiger. (1) Little or low, as in "They better get that foul deck cleared; Dave's coming in skosh fuel." (2) Fast, or quickly, as in "We need to get this job done most skosh."
> *
> This is the F-5 Tiger.  I cannot see why it would be called Skoshi Tiger though.


I've never heard that type of usage (Ngrams don't help) but I probably don't move in the right circles.  Is it still in use that way - as an adjective and adverb - in naval circles?


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## Packard

JulianStuart said:


> I've never heard that type of usage (Ngrams don't help) but I probably don't move in the right circles.  Is it still in use that way - as an adjective and adverb - in naval circles?



I am just one Google-search ahead of you.  I've just learned this stuff myself.  To answer your question, "I have no idea."

This has turned out to be a surprisingly interesting thread.  I'm learning quite a bit here.


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## Delvo

takashi0930 said:


> Let me confirm one thing.
> "A skosh" is used to mean "a little", but "skosh" (without "a") isn't used to mean "little", is it? I mean,
> You can say "There is a skosh water." to mean "There is a little water."
> But you can't say " There is skosh water." to mean "There is little water." Is that correct?


I grew up in Missouri hearing "skosh" routinely, and never encountered it in a static, non-comparative use. It was used for comparisons (this bucket has a skosh more water than that one) or actions (that's too much water; pour it out a skosh). They're unified in a sense, if you think of such actions as making a small difference compared with the original state.

I never noticed this before, but I think I heard that one from my mother but not my father. They both grew up in Kansas/Missouri in the mid-20th century, but her family had come from England several generations before, and he was in the first generation of his family born here instead of Germany or Russia.

Also: "skosh" is a noun, not an adjective, so, even if we were to use it for an amount that's not changing or moving or being compared to something else, it would still need to be worked into the sentence like a noun: "a skosh of water". The only way translating it as "a little" works is if you either think of "little" there as a noun or think of the whole phrase as an abbreviation for "a little bit of".



Miss Julie said:


> I've never understood the use of 'u' in Japanese words...if the 'u' is not supposed to be pronounced, why is it there?





JulianStuart said:


> The Japanese language is based on syllables not letters and the characters represent syllables. The characters are either vowel sounds alone, or consonant+vowel : a, e, i etc or su fu mi ka. Single consonants don't exist (except for terminal n) So, to write the sound of skosh, they must write su-ko-shi.  This almost loss of u is about the only irregularity in their phonetic spelling system.  (You should hear the questions they have about English "spelling")





Miss Julie said:


> I'm still baffled. For example, there have been a few Japanese baseball players in the U.S. with the first name of _Kosuke_. If I hadn't been told, I would have pronounced the name as ko-SU-kay (or maybe KO-su-kay). If it did not contain the 'u', I would have most likely pronounced it correctly, KOSE-kay, the first time.


The transcription is not based on pronunciation. It's based on replacing each Japanese character with a standard letter or set of letters in our alphabet. The Japanese letter in that spot is associated with the sequence "su". Its actual pronunciation is just as inconsistent in Japanese speech as it is in the words we import; they're used to the fact that the same symbol can represent either "s" or "su". But there is only one standard way to convert that symbol into our alphabet, and it's "su", not "s".

Most syllable-based systems have issues like that. It seems as if the number of actual distinct units of pronunciation is always greater than the number of symbols they assign to them, so some symbols always end up doing double duty, especially over consonants without a vowel after them.


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## natkretep

Have never encountered _skosh_ and _kudzu_. Japanese food is common here, so _ramen_ and _udon_ are well known.


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## cissy3

I knew of ''kudzu'', because although I'm British, I lived in the southern USA, and it was a real problem. (Came back to Blighty in '02)



Hildy1 said:


> Kudzu, which I had never heard of when growing up there, had taken over and transformed the landscape. Since then people have, at great effort and expense, got it under control.



I do hope they've resolved the problem, as it was driving out native habitats etc

As an aside, a much feared invasive plant in the UK at present, is ''Japanese Knotweed''


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## JulianStuart

Delvo said:


> The transcription is not based on pronunciation. It's based on replacing each Japanese character with a standard letter or set of letters in our alphabet. The Japanese letter in that spot is associated with the sequence "su". Its actual pronunciation is just as inconsistent in Japanese speech as it is in the words we import; they're used to the fact that the same symbol can represent either "s" or "su". But there is only one standard way to convert that symbol into our alphabet, and it's "su", not "s".


As described  in #15 and 22


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## takashi0930

Thank you again for lots of replies. (And Julian Stuart, thank you for explaining about the Japanese language to everyone!)

OK, so, as is often the case with other loan words, "skosh" is not used in English in the same way as in Japanese.
>Packard
"Skosh Tigar" sounds cute and funny to Japanese ears. Our "sukoshi" only means "a small amount/number" and it doesn't mean "small (in size, as opposed to "large")/young", so a warplane named "skoshi tigar" sounds like a plane only a small part of whch is made of a tiger (and other parts other animals or other things.) It doesn't sound strong! The person who named the plane probably didn't know the real usage of the word in Japanese. I think people in those days should have done language exchanges instead of figting wars.

Too bad kudzu (or "kuzu" in Japanese) caused such a big trouble in the southern U.S. "Kuzu" doesn't have a negative connotation in Japanese. It's used as herbal medicine and also in food/drinks such as "kuzuyu". Kuzuyu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(I wish there was a "Like" button on this forum so that I can press it for everyone's reply.)


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## takashi0930

Miss Julie said:


> I remember "skosh" from blue jeans commercials from the 70s or 80s; perhaps they were Levi's. The tagline was something like "_they have a skosh more room in the seat_..."


I found a picture  http://monobito.com/img/newpostimg/131005/large_post


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## Copyright

I know them all, including *skosh* – now whether I know it from the Marines* (post 31) or from Kansas/Missouri (post 36), I don't really recall. 

From the _Unofficial Unabridged Dictionary for Marines_: skoshi: A small space or time, from Japanese. Sometimes Mo Skosh.

I will say, though, that while some of the lingo followed me after my service, *skosh* was not one of the words. 

_*They're under the Department of the Navy, so a lot of the terminology is shared._


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## Miss Julie

takashi0930 said:


> I found a picture  http://monobito.com/img/newpostimg/131005/large_post



Good job, Takashi!


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## RM1(SS)

JulianStuart said:


> I've never heard that type of usage (Ngrams don't help) but I probably don't move in the right circles.  Is it still in use that way - as an adjective and adverb - in naval circles?


Not that I ever noticed.  I know the word because a fellow I worked with (in Iowa) back in the '70s used it a lot.  When I asked him, he told me it was Japanese.

I'm familiar with all seven of the OP's other words, too, though like ewie I would have guessed that _tycoon_ was Chinese..


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