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These come from the following nippon.com article:

"Pay It Forward: The Top New Japanese Words for 2019" (12/13/19)

I'll list the words first, then explain which one is my favorite.

A prefatory note:  nearly half of the words on these lists are based wholly or partly on borrowings from English, though they are assimilated into Japanese in such a manner that they are unrecognizable to monolingual English speakers.

Sanseidō’s Top 10 New Words of the Year for 2019

1. 1. ―ペイ — –Pei. The suffix “pay” is commonly seen in the names of smartphone cashless payment services.
   2. にわか — Niwaka. The “sudden” emergence of numerous rugby fans during the World Cup hosted in Japan prompted much usage of this word.
   3. あおり運転 — Aori unten. Loosely translated as “reckless driving,” this term refers to tailgating and other malicious activities that may result in serious accidents.
   4. 反社 — Hansha. This abbreviation of hanshakaiteki seiryoku (反社会的勢力), often rendered euphemistically in English as “antisocial forces,” refers to organized crime gangs.
   5. サブスク — Sabusuku. A shortened form of “subscription,” as seen for increasingly popular music and video streaming services.
   6. 電凸 — Dentotsu. A portmanteau combining denwa (telephone) and geki (attack) that means an organized campaign of aggressive telephone calls. It was particularly associated in 2019 with protests against an art exhibition in Nagoya that featured a statue representing wartime “comfort women.”
   7. カスハラ — Kasuhara. When customer complaints go too far, they become “customer harassment,” which this word abbreviates. Bullying of service employees made headlines during the year, adding another hara to the list workers face, including sekuhara (sexual harassment) and pawahara (“power harassment,” or abuse of authority in the workplace).
   8. 垂直避難 — Suichoku hinan. “Vertical evacuation” may be advisable during a disaster, whether moving to a higher floor of a building before a tsunami or during flooding, or going down to the first floor when there is seismic disturbance or a fire.
   9. 置き配 — Okihai. Overloaded delivery companies are starting to offer “doorstep delivery,” where parcels can be placed in a designated spot when the customer is not there to receive them.
   10. ASMR. — There has been global interest in “autonomous sensory meridian response,” which is said to be a soothing, tingling sensation in the head triggered by auditory and visual cues.

Shōgakukan’s Top New Words of the Year for 2019

イートイン脱税 — Īto-in datsuzei [Winner]. Practitioners of “eat-in tax evasion” buy convenience store food taxed at 8%, as if they are planning to take it out, but then proceed to chow down in the eat-in space, meaning that they should have paid 10% consumption tax.

にわかファン — Niwaka fan [Runner-up]. Japan had many “fair-weather fans,” whose enthusiasm for rugby came out of nowhere during the World Cup.

闇営業 — Yami eigyō [Runner-up]. The “shady business” of various comedians who earned extra cash by performing for groups of gangsters was big news in Japan in 2019.

My favorite is ASMR because, while it is an English acronym that is said to be of "global interest", I've never heard of it.  Moreover, I've probably only experienced the sensation that it describes a couple of times in my life, if ever:

Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), sometimes auto sensory meridian response, is a tingling sensation that typically begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine. A pleasant form of paresthesia, it has been compared with auditory-tactile synesthesia and may overlap with frisson.

Wikipedia

Another thing that intrigues me about ASMR is that the vast majority of images associated with this phenomenon are feminine.

I would probably call this sort of thing "goosebumps", and I do get them fairly often in the presence of something awesome.

Question and observations about dentotsu 電凸, which is defined as "a portmanteau combining denwa (telephone) and geki (attack) that means an organized campaign of aggressive telephone calls".  I can comprehend what it means, but I don't understand why it is written with the kanji 凸 (totsu トツ・deko でこ) for the second syllable, since 凸 means "convex; (beetle) brow; uneven; forehead; bump", not "attack".

Dentotsu 電凸 is supposedly derived from denwa totsugeki 電話突撃 ("telephone assault / attack"), which makes perfect sense to me, and the shortened form can also be written as dentotsu 電突 ("tele[phone] attack"), which also is perfectly intelligible to me.  So where and why does 凸 come into this?  Maybe somebody thought it's a graphically cute homonym since it looks like something that is invading you (with the top sticking out like that).

I must say, though, that despite this character and its pair 凹 (J. yō, ō, kubo / M. āo [“concave”]) appearing to be simple and straightforward, they are devilishly difficult to write, both in terms of their stroke order and the total number of strokes in them.  Officially, both in Japan and in China, they are supposed to have 5 strokes, but many, if not most, people write them with 6 strokes, and some even use 7 strokes.  Furthermore, the nature and order of the strokes differs in Japan and China, and among individuals as well.

When it comes to kanji / hanzi / hanja, as my brother-in-law used to say, "Never a dull moment".

[h.t. Don Keyser]

December 13, 2019 @ 5:27 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Borrowing, Neologisms, Transcription, Translation

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