I'm sure it must stand for something...abbreviation, acronym, whatever, but I can't figure out exactly what it means or refers to. I've scoured the Internet, to no avail. Anyone??
shareI believe "pon" is short for "nippon" (Japan) or "nipponese" (Japanese). They really should be calling them "nips" but it seems the writers didn't want the main characters using a well-known racist term so they made one up.
shareI like it because it not only avoids use of an offensive term, but gives the alternative universe another little detail of its own.
I've been thinking lately about how the show not only adapts the premise of the original book to the screen, but throws in elements that remind me of other works by its author, Philip K Dick.
Fictional slurs and slang was typical of him. Ironically, while the novel The Man in the High Castle has only one brief example of Tagomi entering a San Francisco that seems like ours, plenty of his other works have characters going to parallel universes or into the future or past sometimes without "reasonable" explanations.
Nipponese? What the hell? That's not a real word. A Japanese person is a Nihonjin. I know stuff.
shareLook it up.
share"Nipponese? What the hell? That's not a real word. A Japanese person is a Nihonjin. I know stuff."
No you don't
"Definition of Nippon in English:
Nippon
PROPER NOUN
Japanese name for Japan
Origin
Literally land where the sun rises or originates."
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/nippon
Defender of the weak, and enemy of the weak minded.
Nippon : Japanese for Japan
Nihongo : Japanese for Japanese language
Nihonjin : Japanese for Japanese person
Nipponese(Nipponizu) : not a real word
"Nipponese" may not be a real Japanese word, but it is a real English word--with its first recorded use being in 1859. The fact that it doesn't match what the Japanese call themselves is irrelevant. We don't speak Japanese, we speak English.
Nothing unusual about this. Germans don't call themselves "German." They say "Deutsche" or "Deutchen." Italians call themselves "Italiani." Nevertheless, "German" and "Italian" are real [English] words, as is "Nipponese."
"Deutchen" is not a word in German...
shareSorry, I meant "Deutschen." The typo, however, doesn't affect my point.
shareFine, you can say "Nipponese" is a real word if you want, doesn't make it any less cringy.
shareAs much as I may wish I were, I am not the deciding authority for what is and is not a real word. So, I am not saying anything. On the other hand, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, Nipponese is, "another term for Japanese." You can take up your cringing with them.
Lots of things are unpalatable to me. However, I do not, on that account, pretend that they are not "real."
You lost the argument. But now you know things!
shareDeutschen most certainly is a German word. It is the third person, plural form of Deutsche/German in the dative case.
"Ich gehe zum Frankfurt mit den Deutschen Studenten."
"I'm going to Frankfurt with the German students."
also, considering all of the many English words derived from Greek, the word Greek is derived from Latin.
shareNippon : Japanese for Japan
Nihongo : Japanese for Japanese language
Nihonjin : Japanese for Japanese person
Nipponese(Nipponizu) : not a real word
In my language, Japanese are called Hapon so I thought pon was short for Hapon.
shareIts a racial slur for Japanese people. Its from Nippon, which is the Japanese word for Japan.
In real life, Americans used the slurs "Jap" and sometimes "Nip", for Japanese people. I assume they used "Pon" to stay away from using real life racial slurs.
It's kind of like "frack" in Battlestar Galactica. They could use it as often as they want, including in forms like 'mother-fracking', without technically stepping over the line.
shareFor some reason I was thinking that they meant pawn... as in the local collaborators were pawns for the Japanese Emperor. But the word "pon" makes more sense.
shareMy guess is that it is a shortened pronunciation for Japanese.
While the English spelling is Japanese, many Americans pronounce it as Japonese.
It is not far to go from "Ja-pon-ese" to Pon.
My guess is that it is a shortened pronunciation for Japanese.No, it's clearly derived from "Nippon."
Good catch. I thought they were saying "Pawn" the entire show. Even so, Pon makes 100x more sense and nonetheless I knew it was a racial slur of some kind.
Thanks for clearing that up. I'll put on my dunce cap now. :-)
I always keep closed captioning on nowadays when I watch programs like this. Sound quality has very much lagged video quality in development.
shareSlang for Nipponese, the Japanese word for Jspanese. Equivalent of Jap in this world.
shareNipponese is not a Japanese word.
shareNipponese is not a Japanese word.
Nippon is the Japanese word for Japan.
shareJapan = Nippon
Japanese = Nipponese