Welcome 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?

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

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:

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…

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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