What is the Japanese word for "bug"?

I don’t have enough space to explain why I need to know this, trust me… you do not want to know.

It’s either “kamikaze” or “volkswagen”. I’m not sure which.


“pluto … a seriously demented but oddly addictive presence here.” – TVeblen

Ah, gee… isn’t volkswagon German?!

Mushi?

Go to here and put this URL in the slot and key ‘Enter’ or click ‘Go’ to the right of your entry. Then put ‘bug’ (without ticks) into the slot on that page and key ‘Enter’ or click ‘ok’ below the slot. The resultant page will have the the kana and kanji translation. If you want to know the romaji for this, or roughly how to pronounce it, you’ll have to look up these characters up in the hiragana chart here and the katakana chart here. The result seems to be something like gonchubu.

Ray (Not responsable for bugs in the above.)

Pokémon :wink:

How do you know what kind of ‘bug’
they are asking about? There is no context.

Do you mean “creepy-crawly”, “small arthropod”, “insect”, “bug proper”, some particular kind of bug?

Do you mean “scary thing”? “Nuisance”?

Or do you mean “engineering defect”?

Or “television-network-identifying screen-corner overlay symbol”?

John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams

John, where I shoot a lot, we call it "the Meatball" not the bug. ABC's technical word of choice...at least with it's technicians.

Cartooniverse


If you want to kiss the sky, you’d better learn how to kneel.

Try a hidden microphone. . .with six legs.

Ray (This is beginning to bug me.)

oooh! oooh! (With hand thrusted high in the air…) I know this! It is indeed mushi - pronounced moo-she. The reason I know this is that I once visited Japan with a guy who just couldn’t figure out out to say hello. There are many different ways, but this guy one day figured out that “moshi moshi” was one… pronounced mow-she mow-she. Now, moshi moshi, only means hello when you’re answering the telephone, but that didn’t phase this guy one bit. By the time he got a chance to use his new found Japanese phrase, it had mutated into mushi mushi and he used it with reckless abandon on the streets of Tokyo… You can imagine the looks he got from the locals!!! It was several days later before I heard from a Japanese friend (struggling to control his laughter) that our friend had been effectivley running up to strangers on the street and shouting “Bug! Bug!”.

“Hello” is a frequent cause of confusion. Very, very few languages have a word that means “hello”, no more, no less, and “hello” itself is only a little over a hundred years old (hallo, hillo, hollo and hullo are all older, but none of them are greetings). It was specifically invented for answering the telephone, and somehow transfered to other uses, replacing for most people the traditional “Good morning,” etc. But only in English.

The most fun case is Italian, where “Pronto!” is the way to answer a telephone. But it literally means “Ready!”, and when used on the street, it translates more or less into, “Well, hello, sailor!”


John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams

I took a couple of years in college, but am no expert. But here goes:
bug - konchuu, baggu
bug (computer)- bagu
bug fix - bagufikkusu

One thing to remember about Japanese, if the word did not originate with them - they pretty much just stretch the sound by syllable and add an “u” or “su” to it.


If you could remember all of your dreams…
you certainly would not want them to come true.

Please keep in mind that there was no context provided for this word. If you mean to use it as “insect” then the formal word would be “konchuu”, less formal “mushi”. If you mean it the way we americans say “I, gotta bug, I’m sick”, or “eww, it’s a bug”…you probably would use “buggu”.
Hope it helps.

Kionichi wa :wink:

If you could remember all of your dreams…
you certainly would not want them to come true.

As regards the OP…mothra?