British word maven Philip Gooden has written a useful book for the evolving global village we are all living in now, and it’s titled Faux Pas: A No-Nonsense Guide to Words and Phrases from Other Languages. Japanese words and phrases make it into his book, too, of course, and hara-kiri (Japanese ritual suicide) is one of them.
However, most the context statements are taken from British papers, as illustrations, and some of the references are hard to understand for readers not familiar with the world of Britishisms. Case in point: Gooden cites a piece from the Guardian newspaper in the UK for his hara-kiri entry, and the sentence from the UK paper goes: “Politically, any school remaining bog standard nowawdays in committing hara-kiri.”
Question: what does ”bog standard” mean?
It’s Greek to me! We now might need another guide to some of these Britishisms! In the meantime, this book is worth checking out.
Bog standard - regular, run of the mill, nothing special.
It’s one of those strange phrases that seems to have come from nowhere. Some people think it maybe came from engineering “box-standard” meaning something straight out of the box, unchanged and not special. Doesn’t seem right to me.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bog1.htm
A hot link is a friend’s guide to seppuku, which is how hara kiri is commonly referred to in Japanese. Seppuke- A Practical Guide.
He is British, butit is underdstandable and, who knows, maybe someday useful.
http://kyushu.com/fukuoka/features/seppuku_1/5,0,0,0,1,0,0,6,x.shtml
I apologize for the typos, but I just bought 2 cases of fine Scottish ale for 60 yen a bottle. In Kyushu of all places….
Ghoti, quite alright and bottoms up!
By the way, for those still reading here, what other words from Japanese are worth turning into Global Village words for the New World Language Order (NeWLO) we are living in these days?
Maybe someone should write an English guide book titled ”A NO-NONSENSE GUIDE TO WORDS AND PHRASES FROM JAPANESE”, or has this already been done? [with about 100 terms, 101 style]…
Cheers, Ghoti.
On 4/3/06, Julio Juncal in cyberspace country wrote me a note:
May I reproduce your post about ”Faux Pas” in my blog ….Translation
Notes, http://transnotes.blogspot.com, with attribution, of course?
Regards,
Julio A. Juncal
http://transnotes.blogspot.com
==============================
Of course, I said, sure.
Perhaps the idea is if you’ve seen one bog you’ve seen them all.
You can find an explanation for “bog standard” here: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bog1.htm
Thanks for the plug, Danny!
Earlier, in my original post, I wrote: “Question: what does bog standard mean?
It’s Greek to me! We now might need another guide to some of these Britishisms!…”
Well now a blogger in the blogosphere writes to me and tells me that there IS such a guide to Britishisms and it’s titled “British English A to ZEd” by Norman W. Schur and Eugene H. Ehrlich.
AMAZON LINK HERE
In an effort to unravel the differences between British and American English, Schur published his first guide, entitled British Self-Taught: With Comments in American, in 1973. When a revised edition appeared in 1980, the title was changed to English English, and the 1987 revision was published as British English A to Zed. This latest edition has been revised by Ehrlich, coeditor of the Oxford American Dictionary.
The approximately 5,000 Britishisms covered in this dictionary include words and phrases that Americans generally do not use at all (for example, dabs, meaning fingerprints) as well as terms used in both the U.S and Britain but that have different meanings (such as bomb, which in Britain means a smash hit, but in America indicates just the opposite). Entries indicate the American equivalent for each Briticism and usually provide additional explanation. Valuable supplemental material appears in two appendixes, the first of which outlines the basic differences between British and American English regarding syntax, pronunciation, punctuation, and spelling. The second appendix provides a means of identifying terms in specific areas, including currency, finance, weights and measures, and cricket. An index to American equivalents completes the volume. Ehrlich has put his stamp on the dictionary by condensing and rewriting significant portions of the work. He has dropped a large number of terms and has significantly shortened many of the remaining entries by deleting illustrative examples and editorial commentary. In addition, Ehrlich has added a handful of new terms, including finger (shot of booze), ruby wedding (fortieth wedding anniversary), and scrotty (crummy).