Since this was being discussed in another thread where it was totally off-topic, I think it's time for it to have its own thread. Here we discuss the word "hentai" (and "ecchi"), and the difference in meaning between the original Japanese words and the English usage of them.
Relevant thread:
http://4-ch.net/nihongo/kareha.pl/1121923289
Relevant post:
http://wakaba.c3.cx/soc/kareha.pl/1120622894/35
First, a summary of what's been said elsewhere already:
There are other words referring to porn too, of course. To quote an earlier post:
> It depends, really. Porn movies are called AV (Adult Videos), "pink" is often applied to words to hint that they have to do with erotica ("pink doujin") ...
> Futhermore, what we'd call hentai manga is usually tagged as "成人コミック" on the filesharing networks - literally, "adult comic" (and actually "comic" as a loan word, not "manga"). There's also "18禁", "Over 18 only". Both of these are more formal, obviously.
I'll also repost http://wakaba.c3.cx/soc/kareha.pl/1120622894/35 in here:
I got curious and Googled a bit for further discussion on this topic, and found this (on site that is apparently now dead, so only the Google cache exists):
The part I found most interesting were the quotes that person had gathered and translated. I'll cut-and-paste them here to preserve them. Many thanks to Akadai Shirou for doing this work:
What Japanese think about this
These are quotes straight from the Japanese, translated, pulled from numerous sources.
どうやら、日本語の「変態」の意味のPervertやKinkyという意味は少なくて、単にHなアニメとかをいうみたいです。
It seems they rarely mean the Japanese meaning of 変態, Pervert or Kinky, but rather they are using it just to mean any H anime
---
外国人に｢HENTAI｣と言う言葉を広めた奴を捜しています！！！懸賞金＄1,000,000−
I'm looking for the guy that spread the word 'HENTAI' among the foreigners!!! $1,000,000 reward
---
海外のオタク系が日本製のアダルトアニメやゲームを表す言葉。
Definition: Word used by foreign fanboys to mean Japanese adult animation and games
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ちなみにエロゲーはHENTAI GAMEとか書いてあった。・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・なんかやなカンジ。
By the way, [in U.S. video game magazines] they call [Japanese] adult games HENTAI GAME...................... that sounds awful
---
HENTAIとは成年コミックや１８禁美少女ゲーム、アダルトアニメをさす
HENTAI is used [by foreigners] to indicate adult comics, games, and animation
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外国の HENTAI サイトをうろうろと見て歩いていたら・・・なんだか気分が悪くなってしまった（苦笑）。
なんて言うか・・・独特の雰囲気があるよね。
ちなみに HENTAI というのは、日本の漫画、アニメ、ゲームなどのえっちなメディアを指すらしい。
日本人の俺としては、やっぱり抵抗があるなぁ（笑）。
他人が描いたＣＧや市販ゲームのＣＧを無断で転載して、ギャラリーで御座い・・・というサイトが実に多い。
うーん、この辺は基本的な考え方が違うのかな。
節操の無い連中だ・・・という印象を強く感じるね（笑）。
I went looking around at those foreign HENTAI sites... and kinda I just got sick.
What can I say...they have a 'unique' atmosphere.
'HENTAI' is what they use to indicate Japanese manga, animation, games, etc. when they have etchi content.
Speaking as a Japanese person, I have to say that's pretty disturbing.(laugh)
There's a ton of sites that just copy other people's illustrations and rip images out of games, then display them in a gallery.
I guess their entire way of thinking is different from ours?
I get a strong impression of a total lack of civility and morals. (laugh)
---
Ｈ（えっち）
「性交」を意味する若者用語。
実は「ＨＥＮＴＡＩ（変態）」の頭文字から来ている。
海外の濃いＯＴＡＫＵたちの間ではＨではなくＥＣＣＨＩと表記される。
それに対して事情通のＯＴＡＫＵが「ＥＣＣＨＩはＨＥＮＴＡＩのイニシャルなんだから、Ｈと書くのが正しい！」と啓蒙運動を行っている。
その様な日本人も知らないような知識を、どこから得たのか非常に謎である。
てゆーか、正しかろうと間違ってようと、あんまそんな日本語を世界に広めないで欲しい。
H (etchi)
Word used by young people to mean sexual intercourse.
It actually comes from the first letter in the word HENTAI(変態).
Among the hard-core foreign OTAKU, they write it 'ECCHI' instead of 'H'.
Acting against this are a group of other OTAKU familiar with the etymology of the word who go around saying "ECCHI is just the initial for HENTAI, so you're supposed to write it H!" in an attempt to enlighten everyone.
How they learned that sort of trivia that not even Japanese people know is a complete mystery.
More importantly than that, regardless of whether they're getting it right or not, I'd rather they didn't go spreading the usage of that sort of Japanese
---
お名前：天狼星
＜・#65310;BAKAとかHENTAIとかOTAKUって言葉を教え
てるのは誰ですか？ 知人じゃないことを祈ります（苦笑） いや・・ HENTAIは
すでに日本語じゃなくなってるか？ 日本製の萌え系エロ絵なんかをさす言葉だし；
Name: Tenrousei
[...]Who taught these people to say BAKA and HENTAI and OTAKU and such?
I'm praying it wasn't anybody I know. (pained smile) Actually, it seems like HENTAI
isn't even Japanese anymore, you know? The use it to mean Japanese drawn cute erotic illustrations and all
---
さて、このポルノアニメというジャンルには、animeよりももっとこの世界で一般的になってしまっているらしい驚くべき名称がつけられている。 HENTAI、というのだ・・！ 「エッチ」という語がそもそもなぜ使われるようになったのか、常識だと思っていたら案外知らない人もいるらしいので、余計なことかもしれないが言っておけば、この「変態HENTAI」の頭文字なのである。初期に日本の「エッチアニメ」を取り入れた人が妙に律儀だったらしく、略語をちゃんとオリジナルに展開して使用した模様である。売り文句には「JAPANESE KAWAII HENTAI」とあったりする。可愛い変態、である。やれやれ。
Now, this genre of porno animation is known to the world not by the word ANIME but by the surprising name 'HENTAI.' The source of the word 'etchi,' -- while I thought most people knew it, apparently some don't, so I'll go ahead and say it here -- is the first letter in the word 変態 (HENTAI). Early on, when Japan's etchi anime was first taken in by foreigners, they apparently were trying to be weirdly faithful linguistically and restored the abbreviation to its original form before using it. You can see the phrase 'JAPANESE KAWAII HENTAI' used in advertising phrases. Cute perversion! Man...
On the one hand, I always find it funny when otaku incorrectly use or abuse the language of the culture that they spend every cell in their body blindly admiring.
On the other hand, with how much the Japanese slice and dice English for their own use, I think they can give us a pass to do the same with their own every now and then.
I like the word "hentai" because I can use that keyword in google to find English sites. If I want Japanese hentai from Japan I use the word "eroi", a word which doesn't exist in English. So it's very convenient.
Also, those guys who are making a fuss about the word hentai are also often the same ones making a fuss about their favorite lolikon h-game being labelled porn. "It's not porn! It's a =mature= title about little angels! They are so cute when they run around naked and... and... HaaHaa"
Oh and why don't we crusade against "anime" and "manga"?
Japanese:
anime = any animation, including Disney.
manga = any comic, including US comics. For old people, it even includes anime.
English:
anime = Japanese animation only.
manga = Japanese comics only.
Answer: because it's convenient like it is now. Let's not mix the two languages. Or then, PedoBear will have to go. Please think of the pedobears!
> Also, those guys who are making a fuss about the word hentai are also often the same ones making a fuss about their favorite lolikon h-game being labelled porn. "It's not porn! It's a =mature= title about little angels! They are so cute when they run around naked and... and... HaaHaa"
Y hello thar slippery slope argument
I think you need to think harder about how the importing of contexts when importing loanwords. "Anime" is a loanword in English - for ALL animation there is already a term in English: Animation. Thus, "anime" with the Japanese context is used to imply the connotation that Japanese animation is meant. This works, as it is not ignoring the original meaning of the word, however, "hentai" is just wrong because it does not have the supposed meaning in Japanese. Supposed context is submitted by using it while completely ignoring the actual meaning.
And "pedobears" can just fuck off and die for all I care. Only 4chan fanboys insist on using that word.
>>8
The point I'm trying to make by being outrageous is, hentai is now an English word, it's no more a Japanese word. Only the etymology is.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=hentai
Main Entry: hentai
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: sexually explicit animation or comics
Etymology: Japanese `perverted, perversion'
A better question is, if one wants to get rid of the English word hentai, what word should be used instead?
Japorn? Nipporn? Hardcorenese? None of these sound good.
> Also, those guys who are making a fuss about the word hentai are also often the same ones making a fuss about their favorite lolikon h-game being labelled porn.
It's more like "speak english you idiots" in the general direction of the kawaii neko pinku bento box crew.
I think "pervert" might be too soft a translation. Some people use it casually as a badge of pride or something, whereas you wouldn't catch them being proud of "I'm abnormal".
> hentai is now an English word, it's no more a Japanese word.
LOANWORD is the key term here and what I said is still valid.
The reason I care is "hentai" is a pretty strong offensive word compared to "ecchi" or "ero". Actually, it's a cursing word level.
How about this? / Although FPS (First Person Shooting?) games are not popular at all in Japan...
------------------------------------------------
FPS are called "fakku game" in Japanese. (Of course "fakku" = Japanised version of "fxxk") Because someone mistranlated "F" of FPS.
Everyday on the fakku game board of 2ch.net, hard-core fakku game fans are posting,
"Fakku game rules!!"
"Aren't yankees ashamed of fakku games?"
"Fakku game is a part of American culture."
------------------------------------------------
You should not make fun of them, but you must worry about them, right?
> A better question is, if one wants to get rid of the English word hentai, what word should be used instead?
"Anime porn", "porn manga", and so on works for me. That doesn't give you a convenient keyword for Google searches, but personally I don't need that. Also, the word "hentai" has pretty much been taken over by the paysite porn industry anyway, and they're a bunch of scumbags I want nothing to do with.
Also, I do agree that the usage of "anime" and "manga" is a little bit problematic at times, but that is a simple case of a slight drift in meaning from the original. "Hentai", on the other hand, is a completely new meaning for an existing word that makes little sense in the original language.
The reason I personally care is that I'm doing things that bridge the Japanese- and English-language otaku cultures to some extent. And the Japanese find the western usage of the word "hentai" either hilarious, confusing or insulting. So I try to avoid it, in the name of international understanding.
How about "eroanime" or "eromanga"? The latter in particular has a nice ring to it.
Eromanga is a town in Australia, actually. Fancy that. :)
It's a hot, dry town in the Australian outback, and it's about as far from the sea as you'll get in the country.
>>13: I call bullshit. How the hell do you mis-translate "first" as "fuck?" "Fuck-person shooter?" C'mon, even for a Japanese mangling, that can't be right.
It was a made-up example, to illustrate the situation from the opposite side.
...oh.
Well, there are other, true examples that are sort of like that, actually, though you won't encounter them much in the anime fandom. For example, they use the word "manshon" for an apartment building; before I knew this, I had an odd conversation with a woman who kept asking if I lived in a "manshon" after I kept telling her that I lived in a very small apartment.
There's also "outobai", which means "motorcycle" -- it sounds English, so most of them that don't know better (namely, my kids) think that "outobai" is English. (Maybe it's a corrupted "auto-bike?" Is "auto-bike" British English or something?)
>>16
I know. There's pictures of Japanese tourists standing by the town sign.
Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. Trekkie, trekker. Yadda yadda...
Wait, there's two ways to say yadda?
>>19
That's far from "true" example.
Is "mansion" a cursing word? Is there anyone pissed off by "auto-bi"(like you>>17)?
And it's funny that I won't encounter them much.
I came from
http://4-ch.net/nihongo/kareha.pl/1121923289/
Hentai is not only a cursing word.
Hentai: transformation, metamorphosis, abnormality, pervert.
Metamorphosis seems to be a valid word, maybe used by entomologists.
Same with the word "otaku". It can be used as a curse or as a plain word.
Obligatory Wikipedia linkage
>>23: My point was that, though English-speaking people may occasionally misuse Japanese words, Japanese-speaking people misuse English words to a far greater degree.
>>25
lol: "Japanese slang エッチ (H, etchi, often spelled ecchi by non-Japanese)". Bull.
エッチ IS "ecchi". E + C + CHI.
Yeah ッ is a small ツ(tsu), but here the kana that is extended is チ(chi).
My Japanese romanizer program (Kakasi) agrees.
My JDIC_R (Japanese-English Dictionary System) agrees. Plus, no entry for "etchi" in JDIC_R.
My Windows input system agrees. To input "etchi" gives エｔチ, which is wrong.
[continued]
"Exactly how the term hentai came to refer to all sexually explicit content in American anime fandom is unknown."
Duh, in every anime where the male character stumbles upon the half naked girl, he gets told by the girl he's a hentai. It happened in old games, it happened in "Love Hina", it happens in the latest anime "Amaenaideyo".
Anyone listening to the thing without knowing Japanese will conclude that hentai means a "sexually oriented and unwanted behavior by the male protagonist, despite indicators that the girl is actually interested in him, so basically she's telling him she wants a more smooth approach before she surrenders her goodies". In short, sex stuff.
So who am I to believe? Those proclaimed (male?) Japanese language experts who claim that hentai is a horrible, horrible term that no one has the right to use, or plain evidence from countless anime and games?
One more thing: I was told that in Japanese the meaning of the words depend upon the intonation and the context. You can say "you" as a term of endearment, as a neutral term, as a polite word, and as a horrible insult. It all depends on the tone/context. I don't recall examples off-hand right now, but I believe I have seen mangas with "hentai" being used as a term of endearment as well.
> where the male character stumbles upon the half naked girl, he gets told by the girl he's a hentai.
this is from a country that likes its porn full of "no! it hurts! please stop raping me!"...
In other news, when Google ads see the words "happy sex" it shows ads about sexual abuse... http://humblefool.net/happy/src/1122774573270.png
o_O
You're welcome to edit the page with your superior knowledge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepburn_Romaji
> Double (or "geminate") consonants are marked by doubling the consonant following the っ, except for sh→ssh, ch→tch, ts→tts..
In practice, if you search Google on words other than "ecchi", (such as "acchi" vs. atchi", "kocchi" vs. "kotchi") you find that both are in use. "cchi" is actually w?puro and not Hepburn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W?puro_r?maji
> W?puro-style representation of long vowels is popular with non-Japanese fans of anime and other aspects of Japanese culture who are unfamiliar with (or unable to type) more formal romanization methods, as well as people who like the fact that it more closely reflects the Japanese kana orthography.
> [...] The Hepburn spelling tchi for っち may be rejected, and cchi must be used instead.
That is to say, your IME doesn't know correct romanization.
> Hentai is not only a cursing word.
> Hentai: transformation, metamorphosis, abnormality, pervert.
> Metamorphosis seems to be a valid word, maybe used by entomologists.
The "metamorphosis" usage is far less common, and probably not well-known to the general populance. Do you know that "orphan" in English can mean a single line of text from a paragraph that has been split to another page from the rest of the paragraph? A lot of fairly common words have specialized meanings that are only used in jargon. It has very little to do with common usage, and isn't an argument in this particular discussion.
> So who am I to believe? Those proclaimed (male?) Japanese language experts who claim that hentai is a horrible, horrible term that no one has the right to use, or plain evidence from countless anime and games?
I think you'll notice (see >>4 and >>13) and so on that the people saying it's weird are Japanese speakers, not "proclaimed Japanese language experts". It's not that it's a horribly rude word, it's just that it has strong negative connotations and using it in a neutral (or positive, like on a porn site advertising it has LOTS AND LOTS OF HENTAI!) way is very, very strange and creates a whole lot of cognitive dissonance.
Looks like Safari fails at using unicode entities. Here's a fixed link to the waapuro page:
"Wāpuro rōmaji"! Aahh the horror, the horror.... those accents...
Somebody, please shoot with a water pistol the guy who thought accents on Japanese words were a good idea. >_<
[Duh! Why is this board not remembering my tripcode but remembering my name?!]
They're "macrons", actually. Like it or not, it's the closest to an official standard there is. Personally I tend to use waapuro too, although I am not hardcore enough to write "Sakura-tann" like some people actually do. Eh, the hell with it, let's all use Kunrei-siki! Etti!
And I don't like "waapuro roomaji" either.
And "wapuro romaji" will fail in a word processor, tho it would be my best choice in an English conversation.
There should have been another system, using the dash: "wa-puro ro-maji".
>>35
You can use "n'" in a word processor to get the n to complete.
From the wiki article: "Syllabic n, ん, is often entered as nn, although the standard n' is usually also accepted."
I just tried it, it works. Waha chan'!
The other lazy way is to leave the n unfinished. わはちゃｎ！ Tho, this is for the Japanese.
Hah! 'n"' works as well.
Now I understand why I sometimes see dangling '"'s at the end of some sentences.
Waha chan"!
Well, romanization issues aside, what about the rest of >>32?
My stance is that any system that isn't practical in a word processor is useless.
I'm not going to try to learn a method that has no practical implications.
Huh, a porn site advertising "lots and lots of hentai" is perfect terminology IMO. It means it's full of low res, pixellated, cropped, out of order, out of date, sig-removed, mis-labelled drawings. It means "stay the hell out of this place, you would have to be a masochist to pay for this quality". As masochism is a form of perversion, it fits.
It's my understanding that language's purpose is for two people to communicate something otherwise unfamiliar to one of them using familiar terms.
It's pretty hard to describe the power that inflection and situation have over Japanese, especially when you try to explain it using English to a native English speaker which focuses much more on the actual word itself.
The right mix of inaccesibility to information at the time, combined with a desire to fill a previously unnoticed gap in the language is probably to blame for all this. Most of the meanings for Hentai in the west that I can recall were derived right as the internet was exploding back before the Olympics in Atlanta....er 1996... and when fledgling domestic publishers were releasing stuff to vhs & ld.
It actually makes perfect sense, now that i think about it... Since 'cartoon' is a sacred cow in that it carries some kind of inherant 'kiddie' connotation, it is never used by supposed 'hard core' fans to describe anime (some even taking offense at it.) So then, it would carry even worse connotation to say "cartoon porn" to most people because of the kiddie taint the word cartoon has. And since language tends to favour the shortest form to explain something, '18 and older' would never catch on just because its a pain to write or say.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_drift
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoon
It does make sense that people would like to have a word like "hentai", but it would have been a lot better if people had settled on a word that made sense to the japanese, too. For instance, just "H anime".
Actually, that might have been what people did, and then everybody wondered what "H" meant, and somebody dug out the old explanation that it is short for "hentai", even though that is really not significant in any way any longer, and everybody latched on to it. Oh well.
>It's pretty hard to describe the power that inflection and situation have over Japanese
Heheh... I was thinking, it would amusing to have a full episode of Ah_My_Goddess using only two sentences:
"Keiichi-san?"
"Belldandy?"
"Keiichi-san..."
"Belldandy!"
"Keiichi-san...!"
"Belldandy...?!?"
"Keiichi-san!!!"
"Belldandy!!!"
already reminds me of the Inuyasha bumper on CN...
KANEDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAasumimasen....
>>On the one hand, I always find it funny when otaku incorrectly use or abuse the language of the culture that they spend every cell in their body blindly admiring.
What was this supposed to be?
>>49: A dig at your everyday half-assed otaku. What did you think it was supposed to be?
oh well. Language is a living thing, and when it becomes more convenient to communicate an idea in a certain way, then it will be a new definition, fo shizzle.
or another example in cars. In many countries other than US, 4wd is a popular option, where power is transferred to all wheels when one slips. But in US thats called AWD, and 4wd instead refers to locked differentials where all 4 wheels turn at the same speed always(like big trucks).
or in wrestling, how WWF would call a 'frankensteiner' a "hurricanrana" so they didn't have to acknowledge a WCW star. But even in Japan its a frankensteiner.
I think in this case its more important to be correct not for the sake of being correct, but for the sake of being innocuos.
because Pantsu is not Pants.
Why? What you foreigners call 'Hentai' is hentai itself.
It is ridiculously, vacuously true. You know, it is this fact that 'Hentai' is nothing else than hentai which has gotten some Japanese who imagine thir own country culturally youthful and flawless, no inferior than the western. That's the point of this discussion and nothing else.
Gooooogle hits 2000,000 Hentai.
I don't know good English word to... Didn't learn at school cursing vocabulary...
In everyday Japanese, Pantsu means pants now (as a fashion term).
Because the word Zubon is outdated & considered 'dasai', we can't but say Pantsu.
To say Pantsu to designate Pantsu would be regarded unfashionable, or, as if a girl was avoiding the too much pretty word, 'Pantii'.
I don't use the word Ecchi without verbalizing it. Ecchi-suru, i.e., sleep with some one (generally 2nd person). Say it cool, "Kon'ya, Ecchi-suru?" And she will reply, "Mmmmm, Ecchi nandakara..." Ecchi is a cute joking word, one of the most gentle words in modern Japanese. Almighty word. By no way harmful.
We don't say hentai-suru...
Hentai is the word for a girl, in elementary school, who is upskirted. "...kun, hentaaai! Kimoooi!"
No one who already knows another scientific meaning ever uses this word in this sense. By the way, kimoi (short for kimochi-warui) is the best word to knock down a Japanese (male/female). You can omit the last i. "Kimo!" And s/he will never call you again.
Analysis.
Hentai is old Chinese origin word (Kango) & unconsciously sounds intellectual and schoolish.
Ecchi is English word (...yes. English.) & sounds blondy.
No one knows the etimology of Ecchi. It is from Japanese biggest dictionary (kojien) that Ecchi was an acronym for hentai in a high society girls' highschool, long ago, when there was still a kind of high society in Japan.
No doubt English Hentai will be readapted into Japanese.
Few Japanese read Harry Potter, Sci-Fi, Load of the Ring, American comics, fanfics, &c.
It is like Sakoku again. & westerners appreciate with their culturalized and historical and equality-minded objective eye Ukiyoe (manga).
I am not proud of our manga... Cuz would be nationalidiotic. But it is the BEST art form we have by now.
Sorry, I was forced to state all about the subconsciousness of japanese feels.
Hobby is hobby & don't take it hard!
I have heard it said that "ecchi" is how the Japanese pronounce the letter "H", as in "hentai".
>>54 Yeah, language changes over time, in any country.
I remember reading that saitei [最低] was the worst insult ever. Then it was overused and lost its punch. Nowadays it's not so much used and doesn't have the same power anymore.
>"ecchi" is how the Japanese pronounce the letter "H"
True.
>"H", as in "hentai"
Maybe, maybe not. "The validity of this claim is currently being challenged." :)
As a non-involved observer I think it's very obvious it's the H of Hentai, but because the Japanese love (and use) so much the word "ecchi", they refuse to admit the two are related until overwhelming evidence to the contrary. As >>54-san pointed out, ecchi and hentai are currently virtually opposed concepts, despite having possibly a common origin. I'd say they are the two faces of the same coin, one is ugly and the other one is pretty.
The point, though, is that it doesn't matter if that's the origin, since the use has drifted far enough for the possible connection to be irrelevant to anybody but linguists. It is only interesting to people as trivia, as a "wow, who'd have thought?" kind of observation.
> love (and use) so much the word [...] they refuse to admit the two are related until overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Is that a reiteration of the "lolicon means pedophile" argument, or am I reading too much into it?
>>61
You mean those ones who are in denial about being branded a lolicon despite having tons of h-games of very young girls in sexual situations? Yeah, it looks like it's the same kind of reasoning. The words carry a large amount of shame and therefore accepting the labels would be tantamount to a confession of guilt - but they don't feel guilty! "Well, just a little... but it's a guilty pleasure, so it can't be that bad... or is it? People love those forbidden fruit stories, don't they? Plenty of brother-sister stories in the shops... I'm just adding one more taboo for the spice, it can't be THAT bad, right? Right? Please don't judge me harshly... I don't want to be branded for life! Becoming an outcast... Thrown out of society.. People whispering behind your back... 'He's a [insert category here]!' Noooooooo!"
:)
>>62
:) Very nice.
I think lolicon is yet another unfortunate case of word usage going astray. I don't know about you, but I'm pedantic enough to believe loli!=lolita.
It's the ones who use "loli" excessively and excitedly that are the ones with hard drives full of games that, let's face it, should probably be correctly be called "pedophilia".
I still maintain that lolita doesn't mean pedophile, it's just unfortunate that the term lolicon, which should be tied to lolita, now means pedophile.
(needs more sleep... coherency for the win)
http://linear.mv.com/cgi-bin/j-e/jis/dosearch?sDict=on&H=PS&L=J&T=lolicon&WC=none
I don't think it's ever meant anything else.
Bugger. Okay, so should we discuss that we can be a lolicon and that that's not a Really Bad Thing? I argue that we can.
I am actually surprised they have a hikky board on 2ch but not a lolicon board.
I guess even Hiroyuki finds the idea of thousands of people trading U-15 links and WinNY cp hashes a bit creepy.
So yeah, it's really a bad thing. Shame on you, you dysfunctional deviants!
>>66
You're right, it's not a manner of black and white. There are many issues at hand, such as whether you also like women your age and whether you believe children can consent (cough*CV*cough)
>>67
There is a Card Captor Sakura forum which is mainly based around the topic of what they would do with Sakura if they saw her on the street.
>>68
This is something I actually wanted to bring up. Surely we must acknowledge a clear difference between young, completely undeveloped girls, and developing, pubescent ones, which I believe the term lolita was intended for.
Further to this, can one be non-sexually attracted to a sexy, nubile, "underage" girl (ie. a lolita)? I think so. Just because I appreciate a young girl's figure doesn't mean I'd "hit it" at the first opportunity.
And how about those definitions for "loli", namely the age? Many (usually Americans) quote the age of consent as the borderline for "loli". What they fail to acknowledge is that there's probably about 50 different definitions for "underage" in that country, and that there's a whole world out there full of other ideas on the matter, too.
It's also not unknown for young girls, say 14 or 15, to be fully developed sexually. That might get you banned on not4chan, and yet, ha ha, she's well under age (I'll use 18=adult for the sake of my current argument).
A topic owrthy of discussion, maybe, but not really related to the topic of this thread, yes?
>>70 Actually it's very relevant. The question is, has the word loli drifted the same way as the word hentai in English?
Let's make up some definitions.
Japanese's hentai: anyone who is perverted/not aligned with the group's way of thinking, in real life or otherwise, but mostly real life.
English's hentai: Japanese drawings of sexual situations.
Japanese's loli: anyone obsessed with female children, in real life or otherwise, but mostly real life.
English's loli: Japanese drawings of female children in sexual situations.
If this definition of loli in English is correct -- as in, most spread about, -- then it has suffered the same fate as the word hentai. (zomg oh noes!!)
>>71
I'd agree with that statement.
Perhaps also worth giving some thought: Does anyone know where "loli" came from? Clearly it's a derivation of lolicon, but was it the Japanese or the Wapanese (^_^) that coined it? As an aside, I personally dislike it, but only because people bandy it around like asshats.
Novel Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov
↓
Character of the same name
↓
Word for the prototype the character represents (a precociously seductive girl)
↓
Word for any arousing young girl
↓
In their neverending efforts to label social phenomena, the Japanese derive from the above the term "lolicon" for people who are obsessed with young/underage girls.
↓
Since "con" is an abbreviation of "complex" and the other part of the word "lolicon" supposedly signifies the object of the complex, "loli" becomes a word for "lolita".
↓
People in the western realm start using "loli" to refer to underage 2D girls.
If that's true, then we've nailed it down (ie. blame the Wapanese). I knew all the steps before that well enough.
I think what gets me the most is the way people end up using "loli". I'm sure the Japanese don't use lolicon lightly, yet you get online and somehow the English speakers won't shut up about how they're pedophiles. Let it be noted that I can't confirm this; I don't speak Japanese, nor do I frequent any Japanese boards. This is partially conjecture.
Japan is more frank about pedophilia than the West, but the Western use of "loli" is still pretty bizarre.
>Japan is more frank about pedophilia than the West
In what way do you mean? (And be careful to avoid otaku-ish generalizations...)
ＭＯＥ！
ＨＥＮＴＡＩ！
ＤＯＵＪＩＮ！
http://kao.wakachan.net/r/src/1126431422521.png
(ノ∀｀)
The definition has drifted to the point where the noun 'lolita' has been appropriated to mean eighteen and nineteen year-old females on the internet.
Yes, many English-language speakers equate 'lolicon' (or 'roricon' - I've seen this Anglisation of the word) to pedophilia. This ultimately serves to show how stupid and closed-minded they are. The correct noun for a person with this fetish is 'ephebophilia'. An ephebophilist is interested in adolescent females, of the 13-18 year-old range. (Not a preteen or a prepubescent.)
Using a dictionary definition is "close-minded" now?
And the "ephebophilia" argument smacks of denial every time I see it used.
And of course this is still off-topic.
>An ephebophilist is interested in adolescent females, of the 13-18 year-old range.
2. If you honestly believe this is the case you must be deluding yourself, or browsing very strange websites. Go to not4chan.org and tell me how old the naked girls are on that website. 14 years old is the upper limit, the lower limit is something like 6 months.
>>82
From that link:
>Ephebophilia, from the Greek έφηβος (ephebos) "adolescent" and φιλία (philia) "love/friendship", is a sexual preference or orientation in which an adult is primarily or exclusively sexually attracted to adolescents (usually people between the ages of 13 and 16).
Close enough. So ephebophilia essentially means underage, but not prepubescent. As for the whole lolicon/pedo debate, I'm not touching that with a ten foot clown pole.
>>85 I meant the female bit.
Actually using "ephebo-" is a bad choice for creating a word, as in Greek times it referred to young men in training for the army.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephebos
I've also heard the word "hebephilia" used for the attraction to teenagers, which cracks me up as it reminds me of "hebephrenic."
lol - who's coming up with those "scientific" words anyway? They are not in any standard dictionary, and there are already perfectly valid other words already.
Hey I can do this too. Lessee... Highschoolgirlphilia! Tamakinee-chan-o-philia! Making_useless_empty_words_doh_philia!
> Tamakinee-chan-o-philia
I want to see a paper published in a respectable journal use that. If only.
http://www.robobunny.com/cgi-bin/dislexicon will help you create mock-words
Example:
1: stereobullshitmetric (stereo-bullshit-metric) relating to measurement of solid or three dimensional bullshit
>>87
that cracks me up, as it reminds me of this:
http://www.juegomania.org/Hebereke+no+Popoon+(Japon%E9s)/fotos/snes/0/811_t/Foto+Hebereke+no+Popoon+(Japon%E9s).jpg
<3 HEBEREKE
Someone remind me where this conversation is going again? I'm finding it interesting, but we're losing direction.
If we're on the topic of what "lolita" means offline and online, I'm generally willing to agree they're the same. Sexually attractive, but "a bit" underage. We seem to hit a problem with lower bounds here.
My take on the issue:
I believe lolita applies to a girl in puberty. I feel this is consistent with the "dictionary definitions" that we've got. Prior to puberty she's sexually undeveloped. As a direct consequence, she can't be sexually attractive. Sexual attraction to a prepubescent girl then becomes fetishistic (ie. an attraction with no logical basis).
Now for the -philiae. (No, I don't know if that's linguistically correct).
Ephebophile, as I understand it, should mean adolescent love. It's not gender specific, and I figure it should cover a similar age range/level of maturity as "lolita".
In contrast, pedophilia is a love of children. I've hit a small inconsistency here as Wikipedia reckons ephebophilia doesn't necessarily imply a sexual attraction, but the writer for pedophilia clearly believes otherwise. I don't know what's correct, nor am I saying we can trust wikipedia. The truth of this will ultimately lie in its social interpretations.
That aside, the point is that pedophilia is restricted to pre-pubescent entities (by my own understanding). Once again, at this point it becomes fetishistic and illogical.
I'm willing to argue at this point that pedophilia and ephebophilia are distinct and exclusive bahaviours. Both are equally valid for usage if you wish to use them. Calling yourself an ephebophile is not some cop-out, in-denial way of being a "pedo".
Taking stereotypes for a moment, being a "dirty old man" that molests little boys is pedophilia and has a particular stigma attached to it. Being an adult in a relationship with a rapidly-maturing adolescent who is still "underage" (according to local jurisdiction) has a different stigma again. Only one of these is pedophilia, and conciously or not, this doesn't seem to go unnoticed by society (there are different stigmata).
Now, discuss.
>>92
This isn't really "The Pedophilia/Lolicon Thread"...
> In contrast, pedophilia is a love of children. I've hit a small inconsistency here as Wikipedia reckons ephebophilia doesn't necessarily imply a sexual attraction, but the writer for pedophilia clearly believes otherwise.
Hint: On Wikipedia, extremist points of view last longer on the articles that fewer people read.
> Then, as I asked, you'll need to remind me what the hell we are on about here.
See >>1
You'll astutely note that the topic of discussion has drifted somewhat. I did ask where we were at the current point in time.
/fotos/snes/0/811_t/Foto+Hebereke+no+Popoon+(Japon%E9s).jpg){kind=link}