I don’t know if this will help you, but the “fu” in fujoshi means rotten and it’s the same “fu” as the one in tofu = “rotten beans”. As for “joshi” it means girl, but I can’t really relate it to anything that might be more familiar. The only thing I can think of is that in JK (japanese slang for high school girl), J stands for joshi, but JK is probably more obscure slang than fujoshi
I’m trying to imagine someone, an English speaker, instead of laughing as basically ‘ha ha ha’, instead laughing as ‘gross gross gross’.
Thats my attempt at transliterating ‘fu fu fu’, lol.
Other thing that I picked up via Karate:
Many Japanese people don’t count 4 as ‘shi’, but instead as ‘yon’, evem though both do mean 4.
This is because ‘shi’ roughly also means ‘death’, at least this was how several Japanese Karatekas tried to explain it to me in broken English, as I attempted and failed to converse with them in broken Japanese.
I think this … holds more true when formulating certain kanji than it does for the simple syllable itself… but I’m not really sure, lol.
My idiot American brain is still fundamentally baffled by kanji / complex pictographic languages.
… There was that one time I met a guy who swore he had been outcast from the Yakuza, who had a fucked up finger, and also was a 4th Don Black Belt, and demonstrated this to me lets say… sufficiently that I believed him on that…
He told me the correct term for someone such as himself was ‘yakushi’, after I made a joke about him being a yokai.
I don’t know if this will help you, but the “fu” in fujoshi means rotten and it’s the same “fu” as the one in tofu = “rotten beans”. As for “joshi” it means girl, but I can’t really relate it to anything that might be more familiar. The only thing I can think of is that in JK (japanese slang for high school girl), J stands for joshi, but JK is probably more obscure slang than fujoshi
Wait a minute.
How does that work for the kind of… stereotypical emote/phrase of ‘fu fu fu’?
Like, I’m seeing it literally translated as ‘giggle’, but based on the context I usually see it in…
its usually more like … some kind of devious plotting is going on, or someone is being mocked, and this is that kind of laughter…
or, a woman is basically somewhere between aroused and embarassed, and perhaps more slyly… ‘laughing it off’, as we would say in English … ?
Rule one of any language. Homographs and homonyms will always be there to confuse you!
I’m trying to imagine someone, an English speaker, instead of laughing as basically ‘ha ha ha’, instead laughing as ‘gross gross gross’.
Thats my attempt at transliterating ‘fu fu fu’, lol.
Other thing that I picked up via Karate:
Many Japanese people don’t count 4 as ‘shi’, but instead as ‘yon’, evem though both do mean 4.
This is because ‘shi’ roughly also means ‘death’, at least this was how several Japanese Karatekas tried to explain it to me in broken English, as I attempted and failed to converse with them in broken Japanese.
I think this … holds more true when formulating certain kanji than it does for the simple syllable itself… but I’m not really sure, lol.
My idiot American brain is still fundamentally baffled by kanji / complex pictographic languages.
… There was that one time I met a guy who swore he had been outcast from the Yakuza, who had a fucked up finger, and also was a 4th Don Black Belt, and demonstrated this to me lets say… sufficiently that I believed him on that…
He told me the correct term for someone such as himself was ‘yakushi’, after I made a joke about him being a yokai.
Yes, “fu fu fu” is more like the western sinister/creepy “muahahaha” villain laugh.