Sandwich
- Katakana English: サンド
- sounds like: SAHN-DOH
- English origin word: sandwich
- Actual Japanese word: none
This is one of my all-time favorite examples of misuse of English in the Japanese language. Not only does the Japanese language often import English words, it’s also prone to shortening things when possible. That’s whyリモートコントロール (remote control) got shortened to リモコン and エアコンディショナー (air conditioner) became エアコン; English words are just longer than Japanese words. Usually I’m puzzled by the adoption of the English word when there’s a perfectly good Japanese word that they’ve apparently decided isn’t cool enough anymore. But in this case, ‘sandwich’ is a Western concept for which there is no Japanese term. Fair enough. But when you then go and shorten サンドイッチ (SAHN-DOH-EETCH) to just サンド and then go and write it English, you might want to check the dictionary and make sure it doesn’t happen to mean something else! 英語の「sand」って言う言葉は「砂」と定義します。I would also be remiss if I didn’t note that in the picture above, this isn’t even a sandwich, but rather a stack of pancakes!
Nohongo 