Majimehashite

I listened to too much loud punk rock when I was a high school student. At the pub on Saturday, I made that excuse to my buddy Dman, who had just drained a tumbler of something a cool green shade and wanted another. Dman repeated his order for me to relay to the waitress – MACHA NYUTO, PREASE! He shouted at me in his best English, the corners of his mouth turning up suspiciously, and I had a feeling something was up. However, I dutifully repeated the name of this libation, which I had assumed was what you called green tea and soy milk. I’d had a few drinks myself, which got me giggling when the waitress spluttered and turned red. I looked back at Dman. I’d been had once again, not noticing that he had transposed the syllables for tonyu, rendering it green tea and breast milk instead.

Switching syllables, involuntarily or not, is known in English as a Spoonerism, after Reverend Archibald Spooner, who had a proclivity for mixing up bits of words. One tale, likely apocryphal, is that Reverend Spooner attempted to make a toast to the local tavern, The Boar’s Head, and mistakenly celebrated something else.

You can hear spoonerisms, 頭韻転換, tointenkan, in Japanese all the time. I overheard my high school girls hissing quietly, toumorokoshi, toumorokoshi, which means corn, and trying to contain their cackles. The transposed syllables rendered tomokoroshi, the rather homicidal ‘killing friends’.

I must admit, in English, I have on occasion ordered non-alcoholic boot rear, jumped on a tramopoline, and worn steer shockings with skirts.

I can imagine what would happen if I were similarly afflicted in Japanese. In the morning, if I forgot to plug in that mysterious appliance, the mehikoka, the (kohimeka, the katakanified version of coffeemaker) I just might sleepily consume an odd breakfast of yoruguto, not yoguruto (yoghurt), with my Ehime-grown kiman (mikan) oranges. I could find myself on the blurry border between Iba and Chibaraki, or Chiba and Ibaraki. And should I shop at Takamashiya (Takashimaya) department store on my way home, I would consider stopping at Mosburger for a coffee and kikkutsteiki (stikkukeiki, or small cheesecake). My students laugh when I mention I like the pop star Namuro Amie. Or is it Amuro Namie? Manuro Maie?

*Hajimemashite (pleased to meet you) comes out as majimehashite, which sounds like the words serious and run.