when I read 日本語のアニメ I sort of feel like it means “anime of japanese” instead of “japanese anime” or “anime in japanese”, which one was the original intention?

  • ghost_laptop
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    3 years ago

    “日本語のアニメ” would mean “Anime in the Japanese language”; “日本” means Japan, “語” means language (so both “日本”+“語” would mean Japanese language), “の” is a particle used to express possession and “アニメ” is using katanaka to write the word anime. So that wouldn’t be the correct sentence unless you’re trying to say that X anime is in Japanese and is not dubbed to English, for example.

    If you’d like to say that this animation is from Japan “日本のアニメ” is the correct sentence, although it’s a bit redundant to say that anime is from Japan, even though some people consider anime to be from anywhere of Asia in my opinion that’s stupid, since the word clearly states it’s from Japan. It’s as if the US would tell to Mexico that now they have to call their animations “Animation” instead of “Animación” because yes. Countries in Asia already have words to express that, I don’t see the point in forcing them to use the same as if it were some kind of art movement (which exist within of Japanese animation, but not of it as a whole).

    So basically all of @Evelyn@lemmy.ml’s communities are named wrong. They probably used some translator and the translator identified the word “Japanese” as in the language from Japan instead of thinking of it as the demonym.

    日本語のゲーム >> 日本のゲーム >> Japanese Games
    日本語の映画 >> 日本の映画とテレビ番組 >> Japanese Movies and Series (Here they even omitted the word for "Series" or "TV shows")
    日本語のビデオ >> 日本のビデオ >> Japanese Videos
    日本語のアニメ >> 日本のアニメ >> Japanese Anime
    
    • @greensand
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      33 years ago

      The tricky part is that only outside of Japan does ‘anime’ have the meaning of ‘Japanese animation’ specifically. In Japan itself ‘anime’ is a catch-all term for everything animated, regardless of style or origin.