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Since Jap may turn out to be derogatory/offensive, what's an appropriate short form for Japanese/the Japanese language?

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It's a word which gained currency during WW2 when it definitely was racist and intended to be derogatory. The best that can be said about it now, is that it's politically incorrect and should be avoided. – pavium Jul 20 '11 at 9:30
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Do we HAVE to have a short form for everything? What's wrong with using the words as they are? – Waggers Jul 20 '11 at 11:27
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@Pacerier What do you need this short form for? – Alenanno Jul 20 '11 at 12:03
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@Martin - an abbreviation for those purposes (Japan's car plate code is just "J" for example) is different from a short form word that can be used in speech/writing. – Waggers Jul 21 '11 at 8:27
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@pacerier I don't think www.learnjapanese.com is long at all either. If anything, I'd say www.jastop.com is too short. By looking at it, I don't know what it means, and probably wouldn't trust it. I'm not a "computer person," though. I just use the internet a lot. Generally speaking, people aren't going to be impressed or engaged by shorter words, but the RIGHT words. In this case, I think "Japanese" is just the right word... – kitukwfyer Jul 29 '11 at 19:12
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3 Answers

up vote 6 down vote

Have you considered the possibility that there is no appropriate short form? There rarely is one. A let bygones be bygones situation like the one that allows the people of Great Britain and the United States of America license to refer to one another as Brits and Yanks is a rarity. Even when a people has its own in-group short name, it's usually along the lines of "us" or "the people", and it's not really appropriate for use outside of the group. Japanese isn't a terribly long word, so why not use it?

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And Americans would probably not tolerate the 'Yank' designation so well if they realised its (alleged?) origins in Cockney Rhyming slang. – pavium Jul 20 '11 at 11:42
@pavium: What origin is that? – Mr. Shiny and New 安宇 Jul 20 '11 at 12:03
OK, as a Canadian (?) you might appreciate this: I believe that it comes from Septic Tank = Yank so in Australia at least, the short form is frequently 'Septic' instead of Yank. I can never hear the word Yank without remembering this. Ain't it terrible? – pavium Jul 20 '11 at 12:07
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It's more likely to be seppoes in a lot of places, but the origin of the term Yank itself is innocent enough -- it's just a shortening of Yankee, and nobody's really sure where that came from. All we really know is that an attempt at a mocking song by the British (Yankee Doodle Dandy) was adopted as a sort of unofficial national anthem by the colonials, turning an insult into a point of pride. – bye Jul 20 '11 at 12:29
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@pavium - it's the other way around, sceptic came from yank. In the same way that Listerine means anti-American (anti-sceptic) – mgb Jul 20 '11 at 15:30
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up vote 3 down vote

I would just say "Japanese." It's only six letters longer, and far less offensive than "Jap."

What's worse, in American English, "JAP" sometimes has other connotations regrading Jewish Americans, which could make it doubly offensive.

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I had an uncomfortable experience in which an acquaintance was mouthing off about "JAPs" (in the anti-semitic sense), in a Japanese restaurant, in one of London's more Jewish districts. – Marcin Jul 20 '11 at 13:05
@tom but japanese is a terribly long word to be used as a or part of a url – Pacerier Jul 29 '11 at 17:01
up vote -1 down vote

Shouldn't the word Japan and Japanese also be regarded as offensive?

The English form of the Japanese word for Japan is Nippon.
"Japan" comes from a chinese word for Nippon and reached the west when Japan was closed to foreigners.

However if you regard it as, "well Chinese/Japanese it's all the same" - then presumably it is offensive?

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A word should be regarded as offensive if it offends the people it refers to. Are there any Japanese people who are offended by the word Japanese? – Rahul Narain Jul 20 '11 at 13:39
I always say "Nihon" but well, you don't call foreign countries or cities by their original name usually. Just as you don't say Italia for Italy, Deutschland for Germany, España for Spain, Россия for Russia and so on. – Alenanno Jul 20 '11 at 15:05
@Alenanno - It's not a question of the country's own use, it's the origins of the English word - you don't use the arabic word for Isreal, on the basis that all brown people are the same. – mgb Jul 20 '11 at 15:29
@Martin: Sorry, I don't understand your point here. Anyway, the question is not about the origins of the English word. The OP was asking whether it was derogatory to use jap and if there was an alternative. – Alenanno Jul 20 '11 at 15:33
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I'm Japanese. Japan/Japanese are not offensive. The only country where I can think of people taking offense to the English name is if you refer to Taiwan as part of China. – simchona♦ Jul 20 '11 at 17:48
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