kanankas: March 2008

Sunday, March 9, 2008

What's in a street name?

This story brought back memories of moving to California from New York City in the mid-eighties, marveling at the exotic imagery so casually invoked by the designations for the towns, their streets and avenues. I'm inspired to find his exhibit next time I'm down in the City of Angels.

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kananka is Japanese, but you won't find it in a Japanese dictionary. It's a speech fragment that's used a lot, that most native speakers would regard as air, and take for granted.

Certainly I did, never gave it a thought. I'd have to give credit to Diane and Marianne, my housemates in Tokyo where I went and lived for six years after college. My housemates, a Tasmanian and Scot, picked up on the speech, and they started to attach kananka's to the end of their sentences like they would hear out and about. Or just use it by itself, between the two of them clacking away. "Kananka?" "oh, yes, domo thank you, kananka, hai kananka."

The best translation I can give to kananka is "something like that." It follows usually a choice of something, such as tea, and it's used in an invitation to the other party, but the use of the term makes the invite essentially polite and nonbinding and allows for a variance; in case you hate tea and will have only espresso, but wouldn't want to say that so as not to offend your host ... or something like that. That's my socio- psycho- linguistic take on it anyways.

So that's what kananka is about, and it's quintessentially me, I figure, a jumble of this and that. I do like tea, but there are days when I crave a latte and why not, if that is what I like?

kanankas

Sunday, March 9, 2008

What's in a street name?

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