(keitai-l) Re: shortened phrases and words

"49" is another one: shikiyuu = 至急 means immediately, urgently etc.

here are some other common abreviations in Japan (which use romaji):

OL  (office lady)
GW  (golden week)
OB  (old boys = alumni organization)
etc

Gerhard
fasol@eurotechnology.com

Renfield Kuroda wrote:
> 
> There's also all kinds of crazy shorthand, especially left over from back in the
> day (6 years ago) when everyone only had alphanumeric pagers.
> 
> 39 = thank you -- "san" "kyu", etc.
> 59 =go? -- "i" "ku"
> 
> These are possible b/c numbers in Japanese have multiple pronunciations. For
> example 9 is "ku", "kyu", "nain", or "kokonotsu"
> 
> Last week I saw and ad on a subway for a website about advertising on trains.
> Advertising in Japanese is "kokoku", so part of the domain name was 559.com = "ko
> ko ku"
> 
> r e n
> 
> Gerhard Fasol wrote:
> 
> > George Ritter wrote:
> > >
> > > Intensely interesting.  Does anyone have a list of these shortened Japanese
> > > phrases and words?
> >
> > Japanese language is full of those shortened phrases and words. That's
> > not specific to keitai at all. Often it's the "most significant" kanji of
> > a long name: as an example - 東京大学　becomes 東大, or
> > the railway company: 東京急行 becomes 東急, or the railway line
> > from Tokyo to Yokohama 東京横浜線　becomes 東横線, or the motorway
> > from Yokohama to Yokosuka becomes: YokoYokosen (横横線).
> > By the way this custom (such as many similar customs) are not specific
> > to Japan and Japanese language but are also found in China. For example:
> > Beijing University: 北京大学　becomes　北大.
> >
> > Good luck George with learning Kanji!
> > The bad news is that there are up to 60,000 total -
> > the good news is you only need about 2000-3000 of them in Japan for
> > daily life, and a good computer contains about 10,000.
> >
> > Gerhard Fasol
> > http://www.eurotechnology.com/
> > fasol@eurotechnology.com
> 
> --
> ascii: r e n f i e l d
> octal: \162 \145 \156 \146 \151 \145 \154 \144
> hex: \x72 \x65 \x6e \x66 \x69 \x65 \x6c  \x64
> morgan stanley dean witter japan
> e-business technologies | engineering and strategy
> 
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