The Surprising Science Behind the Word ‘Pokémon’

By now, words like “Pokémon,” “karaoke” and “anime” are established terms in modern English. But … are these words English or Japanese? As it turns out, neither! They fall into their own category entirely. “Wasei-eigo” is the Japanese art of making new words out of a combination of existing (usually English) words, and it literally means “Japanese-made English.” Making meaning is never bound by one language.

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[payableondeath]

This didn't really explain any kind of science to it, it was more of just like... "You know words like Pokemon and cosplay? How they're words smashed together? Well, that's called Wasei-eigo in Japan."

I appreciate a video about language, though, as I'm fascinated by it. Fun videos for the future might be glottal stops, or words for very specific things (like defenestration)

[anythingbuttypical]

I have a pocket.. I have a monster!
Ugh!! Pokemon...
xD

[ethanchannel]

nobody is talking about the word anime at the beginning

[huevitoss]

I hope there's a fancy word for dank memes

[kyokyoniizukyo]

huh, always forgot that "Poke'mon" ment pocket monster...god I am old...

[quintessences]

Isnt it officially pronounced as poke-A mon not EE mon? Cause why else is there an accent over the E

[marccoderre]

Funny how he mispronounces the words karaoke カラオケand pokemonポケモン. It's not carry oki and it's not poki mon, though granted many people make the same mistake. It's not really "Japanese-made English" rather it's just borrowed words that have become Japanese portmanteau words. Adopted foreign words first get transcribed into katakana words (what I called 'katakani-zu' カタカニーズ). It's then a common practice to shorten the term into one portmanteau word by keeping the first two kana(syllables) of each words hence kosu+purei　コスプレイ, and paso+kon パソコン(for pasonaru komputa-)

[CUMBICA]

Names of specific characters like Pokémon or Sailor Moon are not considered wasei-eigo. Wasei-eigos are commonly used EXPRESSIONS like manshon (apartment building), ootobai (motorbike) and on.

[slaiyfershin]

Linguistics expert who clearly doesn't work with the Japanese language enough. Pokemon is just a fictional name of a game/show. That doesn't classify it as Wasei Eigo. Simply by being a portmanteau of English origin used in Japanese shouldn't make it Wasei Eigo. What stupidity. Does Pokemon stand for anything other than that very specific branded type of monster that has no distinctive feature to set it apart from others?
What new meaning does this portmanteau bring to the word Pokemon? If the word fell into local use to generally call for e.g. all cute and furry monsters as "pokemon" then it could be argued that it is one, except that it doesn't. Hocchikisu refers to staplers in general even though it originated from the actual stapler brand Hotchkiss. Regardless of whether Hotchkiss was a portmanteau of English words or not, if the word did not come to mean "stapler" to the general public then it wouldn't be Wasei Eigo because it simply refers to nothing else but it's own branding. There is no added meaning.

[adityashekhawat]

Wouldn’t “anime” be better classified as a gairaigo, rather than a waseieigo?

[jumingcat]

For people who is asking where is the science... Linguistic is not like how you would use math and equipment unless you are doing an recording and analyzing sounds of the speech. For this video it is more of a theory science. To define science, I found the definition from dictionary it said science is "a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study". So anything can be science thats why there are biology, chemistry, physic, anthropology, linguistic and others. Linguistic is not limited. We also study about the language's phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics. Linguistic is a social science where we observe and make theory and it is incorporated into different types of jobs. You can use linguistic with psychology, studying modern language, use it in business, use it in computer science, solving crimes, study society, teaching language, deciphering ancient language, translating, interpreting, use it in speech therapist and others. There are alot of job possibilities but it is up to you on how you prove to other people what Linguistic can do for them.
It could be making new programs thats voice generated but how do you have the program recognized that and make it so even with accents the program can recognized what you are saying. You just have to prove it.

[MattMort]

This is a slightly different topic, but I'm super curious as to how someone makes money as a researcher like John Kelly

[NeoFighterX]

Hi there, smug commenter here. I've known about portmanteaus since I was ten when my English techer taught me the word ponder. She described ponder to be a portmanteau of pause and wonder, which is wrong but I still learnt the fucking word OKAY?
(I love GBS)

[AmbiambiSinistrous]

There in fact IS a science behind the properties of linguistic rules for combining words in various languages; however, the details and explanations of the theoretical frameworks would go way beyond a two-minute video. That said, I am still a little underwhelmed/unconvinced by the claim that wasei eigo creates words that don't belong to any language. The PROCESS may be attested cross-linguistically, but I mean, so is the process of ellision (which many anglophones reading this may be more familiar with by the name "contractions" - ellision includes the process that makes "cannot" into "can't", etc. but also goes beyond this into contractions that aren't spelled out.) The words produced by wasei eigo seem to belong to particular languages, and are potentially "loaned" into other languages (e.g. "karaoke" was originally a portmanteau Japanese word that English borrowed. It's not that native English speakers suddenly thought it was a cool idea to splice two random Japanese words together - the wasei eigo process occurred in Japanese, and THEN it was borrowed.)

Another explanation for this video is just that many reporters are not linguists, and it's very common for news outlets to misunderstand what a linguist tells them about their research. I suspect the claim here was actually something like, wasei eigo is a particular KIND of portmanteau with a particular set of regular rules for combining the component words, and these rules apply the same way on some level to multiple languages. I don't know - I can't really tell just based on this video here. But I am just a lowly Internet commentator, and I'm too lazy to follow up on this right now, so I will now retreat to my little cave again.

[thefrzzl]

Cosplay is literally just a portmanteau - not some sort of wasei.eigo.

[allegory]

What words will pop out in the future? *AMOGUS*

[marythoma]

time to invent a new word for how I feel about certain people always in the news and on twitter. fakenewstwiter how about fanewtwit or fakewrtwit or fanewter?

[PixelBytesPixelArtist]

Well that's just called cliping shortened words, nothing new

[firstnameandlastnameples]

Anime comes from the french word "anime" which means animation

[ChescoYT]

Its just the Japanese version of Chinglish. :D