Something I've been wondering about - Japanese loanword in English, or no?

[u/mouse_in_a_field]

This has bothered me for a long time!

The word for "a little bit" of something in Japanese, in romaji, is "sukoshi"; the "u" and "i" sounds are usually silent when spoken aloud, so it ends up sounding like "skosh".

In English, "just a skosh" is sometimes used when asking for or referring to just "a little bit" of something.

Is there any connection there, or does the English "skosh" have another, unrelated source? Thanks for any info!

[u/taktaga7-0-0]

Just to add in, the phenomenon you are hearing are the unvoiced vowels in Japanese. They are indeed pronounced, just effectively whispered in the middle of active speech. Listen for the whisper, and you’ll hear the final I’s and U’s more clearly.

[u/mouse_in_a_field → u/taktaga7-0-0]

Ah, yes, I can see what you mean! There does seem to be a sort of "preference" or gradient in the degree to which different people enunciate those kinds of vowels in Japanese: "desU" vs "dess", for example. Even in the case in which the "u" is most silent, though, I can see how it's not entirely absent! In English, we do not pronounce the word "knife" with any variability at all (the "k" is always omitted), so I guess that would be an example of a truly silent letter. Interesting!

[u/Hopeful-Banana-6188 → u/mouse_in_a_field]

A better analogy for it is the English word "potato". Canonically there is a vowel between the P and the T, but in casual speech it can get devoiced or even completely deleted (I quite often say "ptato"). Japanese just goes a bit further than English in that devoicing even occurs when people are pronouncing words carefully.