Japanese One Point Lesson: なう

19 Jun 2009Advanced Japanese, Japan, Language, Learn JapaneseComments2,625 views

hard-gay-nauWelcome to the first in what I hope will become a long-running series on this site – Japanese One Point Lessons! Today’s lesson is an obscure and fairly recent bit of Japanese I discovered on Twitter – the word なう (Nau).

I take no credit for discovering this, as it baffled me too for the longest time. Every now and then, one of the few Japanese-speakers I follow on Twitter would mysteriously finish their sentence with なう. What could it be? I thought. Probably some weird old way of speaking… I just hadn’t come across it yet in my linguistic explorations, right?

I finally cracked and tweeted the question to an interesting Japanese-language twitterer named @gin_no_hera. He tells me it essentially means: 今〜している (I’m doing [something] now). He also linked me to Sushi, Sumo and Shinkansen which has a post on it. Apparently it was invented on Twitter, although another of my followers claims it dates back into 2-chan territory. Anyone know for sure?

nau-twitter

So, let’s take a look at some examples! And what better place to find them than Twitter itself? Using Twitter Search:

nau-examples

1) yamkozawa: (Listening to) Ikimonogakari now
2) hanizo: Now working
3) marsfield2122: (On the) Chuo-line now

Easy right? You’ll notice that often the verb is implied. Nothing new there then. Let’s look at some harder examples:

nau-examples2

4) ch1cala: (Playing) Rock-Paper-Scissors at Shinbashi now
5) Sho5onthewell: It’s a pain to have to change my trousers, so right now I’m on the sofa in just my underwear trying not to laugh (mobile phone)
6) eaurouge_spa: Leaving Machida now
7) terapicos: Now (watching) ‘A Certain Forbidden Catalog of Black Magic’ (Anime)

What a weird tweet Sho5onthewell!? But crazy-interesting Japanese! Looks like this became a two-point lesson (I’ve already broken my rules on the first time!)

パンモロ = パンツがもろに見える = Can completely see one’s underwear. (A quick Google Image search will verify this – but don’t say I didn’t warn you!)

Apparently もろに means something like すっかり. Here’s Hard Gay (HG) to demonstrate…

hard-gay-panmoro2

Well, that’s all for today!

ワンポイントレッソン終了!!

(Title Image Source is here)

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  • danielshi
    Great post! Moar!! :D
  • Great post. Thanks! Wonder why it developed in hiragana instead of katakana.
  • Very interesting one-point lesson, I like it! Definitely would like to see it as a regular feature!
  • George
    Must...use in Twitter post... But seriously, interesting. Twitter is becoming quite the treasure trove of late, at least in terms of current usage.
  • I agree... :)
  • Great post! Does this mean that everybody is going to start using it なう?
  • Cool, I wasn't sure of what it meant! I haven't seen it on Twitter, well at least I don't think I have, but I've seen it on various places on the web. I thought it meant something like "now", thanks for making it clear for me.
  • Waish
    I guess パンモロ is worse than the flash of パンチラ...
  • And worse than 食みパン!
  • That said, i'm now gonna spam all my twiter posts with なう! :P
  • Fuuuuuuuuuu!
    Dooooomooo! Hardo Gei desu!
    :P

    These things are annoying though, you try but you just can't translate them. I really hate the merged words though. パンモロ is a perfect example. I would have never figured that one out. プリクラ, again, unless I had known what one was beforehand I would never have known what the hell it was. Blasted things...
  • Koiyuki
    If I'm not mistaken なう relates back to bubble economy-era Japan when it was part of a Japanese hipster's vocab when they wanted to describe when something was trendy, hip, now.
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