Jun

7

Word Of The Week: June 7th, 2008.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

June 7, 2008 |

This week’s word is: wasabi. If you’ve ever eaten sushi, you’re familiar with the little green ball of paste that’s usually somewhere on your plate, as well as the surprising kick you sometimes get when a little wasabi is inside your maki or nigiri. And if you’ve ever been a sushi novice (hey, we all start out that way) you may have been one of those unfortunate souls who thought, “Hey, that looks interesting” and popped the entire ball of wasabi into your mouth. The interesting thing about wasabi as a word in English is that it’s one of those words that demonstrates the language’s ability to swallow foreign words whole with little or no change. While some languages, including Japanese, or even French, require some adaptation of a word to make it fit their grammatical structure, English is incredibly flexible.

If you’re going out for sushi, check out this helpful video. It tells you everything you need to know.


Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. Ginger M on June 10, 2008 12:05 am

    That’s an interesting observation, although over centuries, these words may potentially exist in a more anglicized form (or as Netspeak? Wsb, anyone?).
    The video is still as funny as the first time I watched it. I was curious about the actual purpose of the salt at the door and it led me to this : http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ek20060718wh.html

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