[Multilingual Monday] Verbing in Japanese
A source of annoyance to a few people I know about the English langauge is that, apparently, every noun in English can become a verb. Recently someone had asked when Carl and I were going to "get civil unioned," making the noun "civil union" into a past participle. While this is very common in English (even if the end result isn't technically a word at all), English is by no means the only language to do this -- though it is perhaps most COMMON in English, admittedly ...
A great example is "Google." Like English, this word has become a verb. Russian has гуглить, guglit', "to google," and this Wikipedia page shows its full declensions, and German's googeln has a similar declension chart.. And of course we can't forget about Japanese, which has ググる, guguru (also the pronunciation of the noun, but not written with any hiragana normally). Its use can be seen in sentences like 意味がわからないのでググってみる, imi ga wakaranai no de gugutte miru, "trying to Google when you don't know the meaning of a word."
This formation of foreign words into verbs isn't new, but methods have changed. The addition of the verb suru, "to do," was habiturally used after a word of non-Japanese origin to make it into a verb (as seen in ドライブする, doraibu suru, "go for a drive", with the first word being a loanword from English), and this formation in turn was used in Chinese loanwords and to make them verbs (seen in 友達に追加しました, tomodachi ni tsuika shinashita, "to add as a friend." More recently, single-word verbs that don't use suru have popped up here and there -- デニる, deniru, "to eat at Denny's"; ホモる, homoru, "to have gay sex" (from homo); レズる, rezuru, "to have lesbian sex). Even Chinese loanwords that are normally only nouns have taken up this formation , as seen in 事故る, jikoru, "to cause an accident" (from 事故, accident).
A great example is "Google." Like English, this word has become a verb. Russian has гуглить, guglit', "to google," and this Wikipedia page shows its full declensions, and German's googeln has a similar declension chart.. And of course we can't forget about Japanese, which has ググる, guguru (also the pronunciation of the noun, but not written with any hiragana normally). Its use can be seen in sentences like 意味がわからないのでググってみる, imi ga wakaranai no de gugutte miru, "trying to Google when you don't know the meaning of a word."
This formation of foreign words into verbs isn't new, but methods have changed. The addition of the verb suru, "to do," was habiturally used after a word of non-Japanese origin to make it into a verb (as seen in ドライブする, doraibu suru, "go for a drive", with the first word being a loanword from English), and this formation in turn was used in Chinese loanwords and to make them verbs (seen in 友達に追加しました, tomodachi ni tsuika shinashita, "to add as a friend." More recently, single-word verbs that don't use suru have popped up here and there -- デニる, deniru, "to eat at Denny's"; ホモる, homoru, "to have gay sex" (from homo); レズる, rezuru, "to have lesbian sex). Even Chinese loanwords that are normally only nouns have taken up this formation , as seen in 事故る, jikoru, "to cause an accident" (from 事故, accident).