Kawaiii!

[sangatsu7]

Hey I've learned a new mandarin word for cute (キュート).. It's ke ai (可愛). The individual characters mean can love. Maybe it's so adorable that it can be loved? XDD Sounds like kawaii (かわいい).. na? Waiddaminute! The kanji for kawaii is also 可愛い. Naruhodo na..

Interestingly, the word kawayi (卡哇伊) has also been adopted by some mandarin speakers recently

Comments

[hamanosilence]

Well seems some things did not change too much in the time :) And Ke ai .. it's not that far from kawaii , ne?

[sangatsu7]

Yup. It's not that far. Another useful word to know^^

[pheneo22]

oh u mean mandarin speakers are using 'kawayi' as well? hahaha must be the j-pop influence.
mandarin doesn't have katakana, so when they import words the kanji don't make sense. must be really funny if u noe chinese characters.

[sangatsu7]

Yup. dat's what I meant. For some foreign words they actually try to find characters that resemble the word as possible. For example Carrefour is Jialefu which means "Happy Home". But "stop child crying in Iran" is really a far stretch.. We can use that for bijin "code" and no one would know.. ;D

[pheneo22]

great idea! another bijin 'code' to add to our list. hahaha