Katsu, donburi and onigiri are amongst 23 Japanese phrases added to the Oxford English Dictionary in its newest replace.
Greater than half of the borrowed phrases relate to meals or cooking. Santoku, a knife with a brief, flat blade that curves down on the tip, and okonomiyaki, a sort of savoury pancake, have been each added. Okonomiyaki is derived from okonomi, that means “what you want”, mixed with yaki, that means “to fry, to sear”.
Katsu – a bit of meat, seafood, or vegetable, coated with flour, egg, and panko breadcrumbs, deep-fried, and lower into strips – is taken into account a boomerang phrase, a case of reborrowing: katsu is the shortened type of katsuretsu, which is a borrowing into Japanese of the English phrase “cutlet”.
Donburi, a Japanese dish consisting of rice topped with different components, can be used to explain the bowl wherein this dish is served. The culinary use is probably going associated to the Japanese adverb donburi, that means “with a splash”, which “may very well be an allusion to the sound of components being dropped right into a bowl”, stated Danica Salazar, govt editor of OED World Englishes.
Omotenashi, which describes good hospitality, characterised by “thoughtfulness, shut consideration to element, and the anticipation of a visitor’s wants”, was additionally added to the dictionary.
Numerous phrases associated to artwork additionally function within the replace. “For hundreds of years, artists from world wide have taken inspiration from Japanese artwork, and this may be seen within the variety of phrases belonging to the area of arts and crafts that English has borrowed from Japanese,” stated Salazar.
Kintsugi, the Japanese artwork of repairing damaged pottery by becoming a member of items again collectively and filling cracks with lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, highlighting the failings within the mended object, was added. “The phrase subsequently developed a further sense indicating an aesthetic or worldview characterised by embracing imperfection and treating therapeutic as an important a part of human expertise,” stated Salazar.
Isekai, a Japanese style of fantasy fiction involving a personality being transported to or reincarnated in a unique, unusual, or unfamiliar world, additionally made the OED. A current instance of the style is Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli movie The Boy and the Heron, wherein 12-year-old Mahito discovers an deserted tower, a gateway to a fantastical world.
OED editors labored with researchers from the Tokyo College of Overseas Research on the brand new batch of Japanese phrases. Non-Japanese phrases added on this quarter’s replace embody Bible-bashing, ultra-processed, and bibliophilia.
