At work I came across the cool compound 必殺技 (ひっさつぎ) – special move / super move. Apparently it’s often used in video games. I sent it to a coworker and he sent me back this:
波動拳！
At first I had no clue what it meant, but after looking at it for a few seconds I figured out the meaning and then the pronunciation. Have you figured it out yet? Here’s a hint:
Yup, it’s the hadouken from the Street Fighter series. In Japanese literally wave-motion-fist. My first reaction was, damn, everyone’s pronunciation is way off in America. It’s not “ha-doo-ken” it’s “ha-doh-ken.” The shoryuken pronunciation back home, on the other hand, is a lot closer. The kanji for that, which I’m sure a lot of you already know, are 昇竜拳 – rising-dragon-fist.
There’s another compound for the hurricane kick thing, but it’s a pain in the ass to write out, so you can look it up on Wikipedia here.
This is very tangential to your awesome post, Daniel, but I have to share:
Yomi, a card game based on Street Fighter, designed by the guy who did the design of the latest SF, known as HD Remix. I guess Capcom won’t let him use the SF characters and graphics, but for now the pdfs of the cards still have the images.
I guess I do have a question that relates to the post. In what everyday situation would one use 必殺技? If one were not a gamer? Me, I’m using it right now.
Ha, very nice. My 必殺技 is probably my ability to make small Japanese kids laugh. I could probably get a laugh from anyone under 10.
Cool link. I was a little disappointed because I thought at first it was images from the new cel-shaded SFIV. Still, the game looks like fun.
Finally finding out what all those game-related words meant is a benefit of studying Japanese. “So that’s what an ikari warrior is!”
Sorry…but the proper way to pronounce that is ひっさつわざ. You’ll forgive me if I don’t write any more in Japanese…the computer I’m on right now doesn’t have the Japanese IME.
http://jisho.org/words?jap=ひっさつわざ&eng=&dict=edict