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Comment by justusw | Hacker News Reader

Yes, and who else is annoyed by random Japanese words being used to say the thing English but make it sound exotic and sophisticated? From the article: “Jidoka: the harmonization of people and machines” (jidoka/自動化 which literally means automation), or random TED talks about Muda, Ikigai, or Mottainai (sprinkle in Konmari for good measure). People here in JP think, what’s so special about these words? Kanban in the end just means signboard.

I get that adding memorable words to things sometimes gets the point across extremely well, but all those other times, just say the thing you would like to say, heh.

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Sometimes words have inflections, implicit, or multiple meanings in different contexts. The point of using a word from another language is to emphasize the meanings that it evokes beyond the literal, and always inadequate, translations. The simplest example I know of in Japanese is "hai", which literally translated means "yes", but はい doesn't necessarily signal agreement. Take the english word, "okay". Depending on the context and how it's said, it can mean simple acknowledgement or something closer to WTF.

Of course people who think the literal translation is the meaning will miss the connotations.

> Of course people who think the literal translation is the meaning will miss the connotations.

Isn’t that exactly the problem, though? In my mind, these loan words from other languages create the illusion that they were clear and unambiguous. In reality, however, people still often enough talk cross purposes, but as they now use exotic language, they often won’t even notice. (And when they do, they start a flamewar about who has the right definition, which rarely leads anywhere useful.)

One other downside is that all that made-up wording makes it unnecessarily difficult for job starters to find their bearings.

If you organise your team’s tasks with post-its on a whiteboard, why not just call that “task board”, plain and simple? That might not imply all the particularities of the process, but there are many examples from all areas of life where terms in themselves don’t convey perfectly comprehensive meaning, and yet, people manage to deal with that.

Then everyone would see "task board" and assign whatever meaning or implication they already have with that term, probably missing the point of why this system is not the same as the task board they learned about in elementary school or whatever. Different people would assign different understandings, and none of them would be the one intended by the system.

> unnecessarily difficult for job starters to find their bearings.

"unnecessarily" is a value judgment. You're assuming that using familiar words automatically leads to common understanding, that people will notice if they have different understandings, and there won't be flamewars about the meaning of common words. What's worse, the effort to explain to new people the system, or the results from everyone assuming "task board" means whatever they think it means and running off in different and possibly conflicting directions?

Words mean things. Loan words enrich language when they lead to shared understanding.

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