Forum - View topicMorphology of the word otaku
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Cetus-kun
 Posts: 139 |
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I’m doing a Linguistics project where we take a word and break it down into morphemes. My teacher wants us to talk about who uses the word, where it comes from, why people don’t use other terms with similar meanings, and discuss the word formation processes involved in the creation of the term.
I asked my teacher if we can use foreign words that people in English language speaking communities use and he said I could. So getting to the point I have chosen the word otaku. My question is how you would break the word into morphemes? I know the word translates to “your house” but which part means "your" and which part means "house"? Is that even how the word should be broken into morphemes? Anyone mind helping me out? |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6897 Location: Kazune City |
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Otaku, written in hiragana as おたく and with kanji as お宅, uses the "respect prefix" o-. This prefix o- (which can become go- before words that use on-yomi (Chinese readings) of kanji) can mean "your" or more broadly "something not belonging to the speaker," so we get onamae (your name), otomodachi (your friend), and many other uses of o- before common domestic items and places, like osara (plate), otearai (toilet, although トイレ [toire] is often used). o- also lends a more formal tone to anything, and is often used by women in places where men wouldn't use it, like oniku (meat). Taku, then, is the part that means house.
It's a little different talking about morphemes and morphology in Japanese--if a morpheme is the smallest unit of sound that carried meaning, almost any single syllable can carry multiple meanings, like shi, se, ku, ta, and others...they require the kanji to take the meaning beyond the sound alone, which means that spoken words need to be understood based on context, since different ways of representing a sound can create different meanings; and there we have the basis for many of the puns seen in anime. |
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Cetus-kun
Posts: 139 |
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Thank you very much. That really helped me a lot.
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pythos
Posts: 127 Location: Denver, CO |
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The jeKai entry for "otaku" may be helpful to you. It has definitions of the Japanese and English usage, history, Japanese variants, etc.
jeKai otaku entry |
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Cetus-kun
Posts: 139 |
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I wasn't having a lot of luck looking for good sources. Thanks
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