Revenge and Ribenji

All languages borrow words from other languages, but the Japanese may arguably do that more than anyone else. Many words are adopted from English; these words are called wasei eigo (和製英語). Often these words change meaning from the original in a way that makes them hard to understand for a native English speaker.

One such word is Revenge, or as it's spelled phonetically in Japan, ribenji.
In English of course it means to retribution, payback - to get vengeance from another party. The word has entered Japan fairly recently it seems, but it's used in a totally different way. Oddly, the revenge seems primarily directed to onesself, to objects, or mere actions, not one's arch enemy.

Example: 試験を受けて失敗したので、リベンジしてみました。(shiken o ukete shippai shitanode, ribenji shitemimashita.) - I tool an exam and failed, so I ...revenged.

Eh?

Or how about this web page.. It's called the リベンジ☆ヤフーオークション , or Revenge Yahoo Auction, which sounds rather violent. But it's actually   a web app of sorts which automatically re-lists Yahoo! Auction items that didn't get any bids.

A pattern emerges. It seems as though the word 'revenge' has taken the place of other words that start with re-, such as retry and relist. But another way of looking at it is that people have taken the concept of payback, which in the Western world is directed only at other humans, and applied it to things and deeds.

All this makes life hard for the Japanese student of English who wants to learn the proper meaning of things. It also shows a rather odd side of Japanese culture though, which can give a sort of personality to inanimate objects. Maybe this sort of thinking explains all those cute household items with faces on them...

Actually, revenge (or ribenji) is rarely used as its original meaning, as in get payback or vengeance against another person, probably because there's a perfectly good Japanese word for it, fukushuu (復讐). To a Japanese person 復讐 sounds a lot more serious than ribenji. You can't really imagine a gang of samurai ribenji'ing themselves on the lord that wronged their master.

Comments

[James]

Found your Just Hungry site from the Discover option on Google Reader. Looks like I stumbled on a cornucopia of bloggy goodness. Subscribed to JH and HFW, and I just might do some ribenji on my wayward pursuit of bento.

Looking forward to your entries (and entrees?)!

[maki]

Thanks for visiting my sites! :)

[Tadashi]

Hi! Thanks for writing this blog , I really enjoy reading it.

I'm studying Japanese at the moment so it's interesting to read some more in depth explanations to words and phrases.