Japan Scene 13: Nanban? Barbarian Chicken!

My friends are either annoyed or amused when listening to my many stories of me mixing up similar-sounding words/phrases in Japanese. なんばんですか? Am I asking you your number? If you want succulent chicken or if you are a barbarian? Today while eating lunch at school (and being annoyed because it is supposed to be a public holiday) I unexpectedly mined some new material to annoy/amuse my friends with. I had to take up comedy because my rap career didn’t take off.

Chicken Nanban

The dish we were having is called “nanban”; a succulent chicken dish originating overseas adapted to Japanese tastes. It was the pronunciation of the dish that jumped out at me because with my limited Japanese vocabulary “nanban” was already assigned to “What number?”. So I whipped out my trusty smartphone dictionary and a quick search resulted in the definition “southern barbarians”.

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Things I learned. I am reminded why kanji is important and I now have new material for my friends to applaud/punch me for.

なんばんですか?

なんばん – “Nanban” written in hiragana, one of 3 writing scripts in Japanese
何番 – What number?
南蛮 – Western European (Portugal and Spain), Southeast Asian
Nanban – Exotic, Foreign, Unusual

Nanban history and chicken recipe

While doing a little googling for this blog post I got a great Japanese history lesson in this article – Nanban dishes are fit for a barbarian, found a Nanban Chicken recipe and brushed up on the difference between Homonyms, Homographs, and Homophones.

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Homonyms, Homographs, and Homophones

Homonym: words with the same sounds and same spellings but with different meanings
Homograph: words with the same spellings but with different meanings
Homophone: words with the same sounds but with different meanings

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