The Japanese language has many examples of words that are contracted or abbreviated for convenience. For example the word デパートis often used to mean ‘department store” in Japanese. However, デパート is a contracted form of デパートメントストア. When you think about it, デパート is much easier to say than デパートメントストア. Some people wrongly assume that Japanese people don’t understand English because they think that words like デパート are the original translations of English words into Japanese. What they don’t realize is that words like デパート are not the original, but the contracted forms of the original word. If you look at the word デパートメントストア, I would say that’s pretty close to the English word for ‘department store’.

It’s not just foreign words that are abbreviated. Japanese people sometimes refer to Tokyo University as とうだい, which is a contracted form of とうきょうだいがく. Words can be further abbreviated by using the initial letters of compound words. For example OL is a contracted form of オーエル, which means ‘office lady’. Only the ‘o’ from ‘office’ and the ‘l’ from ‘lady’ are combined to form this word. Some of these contracted words are so common, people don’t always know the full-length terminology that originated from these contracted words. Take a look at the contracted words below. Do you know the original spellings of these words? In other words, how many of these contracted words can you remember in their original form?

1. テレビ
2. HP
3. アニメ
4. エアコン
5. PV
6. トイレ
7. パソコン
8. スーパ
9. CM
10. スタバ
11. コンビニ
12. リモコン