The first part of iso’s post had me in stitches lol. Can totally relate to what he’s talking about. As for the topic, I’d imagine alot of Yakuza use slang.

Today’s Tofugu post reminded me of 殺し屋１, which as of course filled with interesting yakuza-related vocab like 紋紋/もんもん (Yakuza tattoos) and 組長/くみちょう　(head of a ‘group’). Of course, most of the stuff in that manga’s…not the sort of thing you’d want to include in your day-to-day life, but it’s still pretty fascinating.

Also I’m not sure if it’s because I grew up in the Midlands, but I had absolutely no clue what half of those words meant. I know it’s all real slang, but it honestly sounded like they were just throwing random words around. Unders? Bear? Yellow? Go hug one? Bangle? Why is peak a bad thing? And gassed…is that something to do with drugs?

…Is this what it’s like to be American? o__O

• This reply was modified 12 years, 7 months ago by  Pencil.

Is that really slang or is it more of the local dialect / sociolect. Move around the UK a bit and you’ll find lots of dialects. In Japan, there are similar dialects, from different regions.

Lets see… Lets say a dialect is a regional way of speaking, including a unique lexicon that may contain slang, a sociolect is similar but is typically also limited to a social class.

Slang on the other hand is more of a misuse of language or invented words created by a subculture/group.

I’d probably also want to talk about colloquialisms as separate from slang as well!

As far as slang I guess a lot of Japan’s internet culture would count, wwwwwwwwww, 88888888888888888, warota, etc. Then there is otaku culture, moe anyone? Yakuza would be another social/cultural group with their own slang.

I think Japan’s transliteration of foreign words is like the ultimate slang, and then they like shortening their words as well though that might be more of a colloquialism.

• This reply was modified 12 years, 7 months ago by  vlgi.