Foreign words are great. Sometimes we use them to soften or obscure the meaning of a traditionally vulgar or taboo word or subject. Other times they are used to add a certain flare to a subject, or to form a slightly different connotation than that of its literal interpretation. It seems that both the Japanese and the Americans, or at least a small otaku (nerd / anime and manga super enthusiast) subculture thereof, have been doing this with each others’ words and in some cases the words gets passed back and forth.

I recently ran into the word “ecchi” (pronounced like eh-chy with a slight pause in between) a few times on English-speaking sites, which I found really amusing because I know it’s a word that’s been tossed back and forth across the world a few times. Here is the gist of its lineage to the best of my knowledge:

It starts with the word hentai (pronounced like hen-tie) which is composed of two kanji characters, “hen” meaning “change, strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric, etc.” and “tai” meaning “state or appearance”. They come together to form the word hentai which means either “transformation / metamorphosis” or “abnormality / pervert”. In the many Japanese movies, shows, and cartoons that I’ve seen, this word is always used the same way we would use pervert. It usually applies to someone that is overtly sexual or somewhat sexually deviant. In anime (Japanese cartoons and animated shows), there is inevitably a scene where a girl enters a boys room for the first time and accidentally discovers his porno collection. She will then flip out and call him a hentai. It is not a nice word to call someone, of course, but it is a lot nicer than chikan (chee-kahn) which might also be translated as pervert but has more of the connotation of being a molester. If you have an odd porn collection or you like to sniff panties then you would be called a hentai. If you are trying to “accidentally” grope girls on a crowded subway car then you have crossed the line into chikan land.

Now we go back to The States where hentai takes on the meaning of x-rated. English speakers usually use it to refer to either pornographic Japanese manga (comics / graphic novels) or pornographic Japanese anime. As this genre progressed, hentai was shortened down to the prefix “H”, giving us H-manga, H-anime, and H-games (pornographic video games).

Somehow this “H” prefix made its way back to Japan where it was transliterated as ecchi, which is as close to “H” as their phonetic system can get. Here its meaning has softened to mean sexy, erotic, naughty, or simply to have sex or “mess around”. It is a playful word and I’m assuming it is used most often by children who would be embarrassed to use stronger language.

Now once again we come back to The States where ecchi gets used as a softer version of hentai and is applied once again to Japanese manga, anime, and video games to mean soft-core or slightly sexual. In other words, tits and ass only.

I wonder if this will ever end? I wonder if we will start to see the terms E-anime and E-games being thrown around? And if so, just how will the Japanese use “E”? Now that I think about it, I suspect that it will end at ecchi. I don’t see “E” becoming popular because people are pervs and will always favor “H”. Even if “E” became a thing here, it would be transliterated in Japanese as “ii” which already means “good”.

So now you know way too much about the word ecchi. Congratulations, you are well on your way to becoming an authentic otaku.

I hope you enjoyed this little cultural exchange lesson. I will keep my eye out for any other bizarro cross-nation repetitive language mutations.