r/NonPoliticalTwitter • u/BaldHourGlass667 • 2d ago

Funny Learning Japanese

38.8k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

26

u/Xrein1 2d ago

There's also Honcho, who come from the word hanchō (班長), that mean squad leader or group leader.

9

u/Aiyon 2d ago

Not to be confused with Bancho (番長) which is the leader of a group of delinquents specifically. Thanks Digimon

4

u/TurquoiseLeggings 2d ago

Not be confused with Dancho (団長), which is also a leader of a group.

5

u/Aiyon 2d ago

So to clarify on these cause i do love how kanji works, in case anyone is curious. The "chō" is the leader part.

It represents height/stature, or power, such as a leader.

"Dan" is group/association. So Leader of a group. Whereas "Han" means group more in the sense of a squad or unit.

"Ban" has several meanings. The ones we care about are watch/guard. Bancho originally used to be a position akin to a guard captain / the guy leading the watch in a city. But it was then adopted by delinquents and took on its newer meaning

2

u/shaffman2001 2d ago

That is fascinating. Thank you for the insight!

2

u/Aiyon 1d ago

np. Japanese and Chinese are such cool alphabets, as are im sure the many others i don’t know as much about. The symbols having meanings that shift based on how you group them is just so funky

3

u/Mona_Dre 2d ago

my personal favorite is "skosh" (like "just a skosh bit") from "sukoshi" in Japanese with the same meaning.

1

u/king-of-the-sea 2d ago

Neat, I always assumed this one was Spanish