How to Shorten Your Japanese

Deas lives on and blogs from Hakatajima, halfway between Honshu and Shikoku. He’s a fellow wonky culture lover who tends to write about his personal struggle to conquer the Japanese language, as well as about trips abroad, adventures in eating, life as an ALT, and comedy. From tongue twisters, to old radio dramas and just being silly, he approaches Japan from a casual perspective, tempered by time and humor.

In this guest post, I thought I’d walk you through some convenient methods for picking the pace up on your speech, dropping unnecessary syllables, and blending in with the kids your age. (Unless you’re older and you want to be like the uncomfortable teen’s awkward mom poorly using “Wassup?” If that’s you, this article might not be for you. Then again, some people can pull it off. Your call.) The following examples are all found in the above video as well. Choose your favorite format, and follow along. And of course, feel free to leave comments and ask questions!

The Incredible Shrinking Greeting

Many greetings become condensed, maybe because they are often repeated a bazillion times every day as set phrases. Here are 3 examples, and one head-fake to watch out for.

おはようございます　→　～っざいます　(like a sneeze, but not)
こんにちは　→　ちわっ
こんにちは　→　チーッス

*「おっす」 is NOT an abbreviation of おはようございます, it is a different word entirely. Really. Promise.

High Ranking Thanking

Thanking people is also a pretty common affair. When one starts vigorously thanking people, it becomes easy to trip on all of those syllables. How do we fix that problem? Simple – remove most of the syllables.

ありがとうございます　→　あざっす

Bust a Copula

First off, no “copula” isn’t a dirty word. Ahem. (Nor is it a Hollywood director – that’s Coppola. Sheesh.) “Copula” refers to the word that means “it is” in Japanese; です, or in casual form だ. While you can’t make だ any shorter, you can sure make です easier to say by slicing off that hard “d” sound. Sure, it’s kind of like erasing half of the word – but all the cool kids do it.

です　→　ッス

*Explanation of the “oyaji gag” from the video: 「そうッス」＝(kinda)＝「ソース」＝「SAUCE」As you can see, it’s a really dumb pun. You will get groans with this joke. If that’s your goal, feel free to use it – but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Zingier I-Adjectives

When you want to be super emphatic, or show surprise, you can shorten an i-adjective by dropping the い on the end and abruptly ending the sound just before it. You don’t usually say this for positive things, but there are exceptions. (I can imagine choking off the end of すごい or its altered form スゲェ, or perhaps 深い when someone says something profound, but it’s not too common.)

暑い　→　暑っ
寒い　→　寒っ
早い　→　早っ

Accentuate with Accent

Tired of speaking like the textbook all the time? Want to loosen up? Introduce a little bit of slang to your speech to give it the right amount of local grit. It helps when you’ve been in Japan, and can discern between “ya’ll” and “youse guys” type accents, of course. If you can switch appropriately to mirror the people around you, you’ll have become a truly adept social chameleon.

わかりません　→　わかんない
わかりません　→　わからん
知りません　→　知らん

By the way, I used kanji in the video where I’ve used kanji here. 分かりません is iffy, so I left it in hiragana.

Message From Koichi: Be sure to read and follow Deas’ blog, his YouTube account, and Twitter account!

Related posts:

1. Tenso: Get Your Own Japanese Shipping Address (and ship things on the cheap)
2. What Do You Call Your Japanese Sweetheart?