卡哇伊?

[Glenn]

I just came across this in a comment on Tudou:

片中这个演女儿的。。。真卡哇伊到极致了

Has anyone else come across 卡哇伊 before? It's obviously a phonetic loan from Japanese かわいい (kawaii/"cute"), but isn't that what 可愛 is for? It's even got a fairly similar pronunciation.

[xiaocai]

How about s search on Wikipedia?

[roddy]

in a comment on Tudou

Tried to make sense of any Youtube comments lately? ;)

It's just the continual efforts of young people to adopt and invent new vocabulary so they feel fresh and interesting and distinct from us older folk.

[xiaocai]

I think it is comparable to the word "anime". Japanese borrowed this word from English but now it has been exported back to English speaking countries to mean specifically Japanese cartoons.

[Outofin]

It's just the continual efforts of young people to adopt and invent new vocabulary so they feel fresh and interesting and distinct from us older folk.

That's right. They stopped using 可爱. I just learned the most popular way to say it, 萌. 萌 doesn't sound cute to me at all.

[skylee]

I think it is like writing it in katakana (カワイイ) instead of in kanji and hiragana (可愛い).

[Glenn]

@xiaocai: I didn't even think to look on Wikipedia. I guess it's more widespread than I thought.

@roddy: I haven't seen anything that's looked too strange to me on YouTube to date, but I don't watch Chinese videos on YouTube all that much so I haven't seen many comments in Chinese on YouTube as a result. Plus my Chinese level isn't that high. But young people always have a way of talking different from their parents. That's just the way things work.

So anyway, how commonly do you come across this? Before I saw that last night I had only ever seen 可愛 that I'm aware of, although I grant that I just may not have recognized it, despite it seeming like it would stick out, especially given the "phonetic" characters used in it.

[Glenn]

RE: 萌, does that mean the same as 可愛? 萌え (moe), which is where I'm sure 萌's meaning that doesn't mean "sprout", "people", or "harbinger" came from, doesn't mean the same thing as かわいい (kawaii). Kawaii is "cute", generally speaking, but moe expresses some intense feelings towards something, like longing or excitement or an attachment. It's more about the speaker than the object being spoken about in that sense. The Taiwanese MOE and Baidu dictionaries don't give anything other than the original senses for 萌, so I can't tell from there.

[xiaocai]

Maybe not so much over all but ACG subculture is particularly influential among younger Chinese netizens. So I'd assume that you are more likely to come across this use on internet than in real daily life in China.

[Lu]

So anyway, how commonly do you come across this?

I bought a little stamp with this word on it in Taiwan once, in 2005. That's the only time I've seen it, but then I'm not really connected to youth culture in any country.

[Glenn]

Ah, so it's a sort of "net-speak" of the younguns then, eh? It does seem like it'd probably be more of a Taiwan thing, but on a stamp? Like an official government-issued postage stamp?

What does ACG mean?

[Lu]

Neh, a cutesy pink stamp of the kind that girls bring to school to stamp their friends' agendas with. Made for a nice gift to a friend who studied Chinese but also spent some time in Japan.

[xiaocai]

Animation, comics and games. I think it is a Taiwanese way to describe this particular industrial sector in Japan, which is influential among Asian countries. See here (wikipedia link, again ) for more details if you are interested. And yes, I think they first started using 卡哇伊 in Chinese in Taiwan too.

[Glenn]

xiaocai, you're really busting my chops here. Seriously, though, thanks guys!