Eating Vikings
Yesterday, I headed to Tokyo to buy some books and things for the Brazilian party next friday. While boarding the yamanote line, I watched something really amusing.
For those of you not in the know, some of the trains in the yamanote line have these small televisions, where they show some animated ads, besides information about stops and the weather.
One of the ads that day was for an english school. In it, a guy with a silly goatee was giving the “english tip of the day”. The tip was the difference between “Viking” and “Buffet”.
For some misterious reason, “Buffet” in japanese is katakanized into “Baikingu” - which is the same word for viking, and has NOTHING to do with the pronouciation of “Buffet” at all (I would be something like “Biffetto” i guess). So our friend in the TV ad was asking a japanese student of his school what he wanted for dinner, and when would say “Viking”, the teacher would show him a big picture of a very ugly viking, axe, horned helmet and everything else.
Now, I had heard the word before, but I’m kinda glad that some japanese recognize that the use is a bit bizarre.
I mean, I know some pretty amusing Gairaigo and katakanago, but how the hell did “baikingu” become “Buffet”?
February 13th, 2006 at 11:24 am
I also hate katanago… Specially because it is harder to pronunciate it than in its real spelling. Another day I also was wondering about this word too… Never understood before and it isnt in my electronic dictionary…
They should do like the chinese. inventing words with their own vocabulary…
February 13th, 2006 at 11:33 am
!? Weird… There’s no “baikingu” as buffet in my dictionary… It means only viking… Another word that’s not in dictionaries?
But I think I found out why… “Baikingu ryouri” means “smorgasbord”… And that means “a meal at which you serve yourself from a large range of hot and cold dishes”. So maybe somebody just had the idea of shortening “baikingu ryouri” into “baikingu” (how many times you say “viking” a day?) and the confusion started…
Or maybe they just used to eat vikings in buffets, anyway…
February 13th, 2006 at 4:43 pm
Well, My Dictionary has “bikingu”
Maybe you guys need new dicts 
February 14th, 2006 at 8:34 pm
Reminds me the word “saboru”, that we hear often. My Japanse teacher tells me that it descended from sabotage.
February 18th, 2006 at 10:01 pm
I think they realized that “smorgasborg” would be hard for people to remember, so they used a more recognizable word, “viking”, to try to give it a scandanavian sound. But, it just sounds very strange to me.