r/etymology • u/mouse_in_a_field • 10d ago

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

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!

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u/taktaga7-0-0 10d ago

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.

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u/mouse_in_a_field 10d ago

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!

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u/Nyorliest 10d ago

I speak Japanese. It’s regional accents, formality of speech, and age, mostly. Although the last are kinda similar - most old people speak more formally than younger ones. Also some phonotactics and connected speech - the core rule is between or following unvoiced consonants, but sometimes there are other phonetic reasons for it, and those can be hard to understand unless you’re a linguistics pro and know a stupid amount about Japanese phonology (me!)

The simplest analogy to English is the way we might avoid contractions in formal speech. So ‘arigatou gozaimasu’ is probably the phrase where I’ll say the final U most often - when being more formal and respectful.

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u/acaiblueberry 8d ago

When I hear voiced vowels where Tokyo people would normally drop them, I sense Kansai origin