Pseudo-Chinese (
Japanese: 偽中国語,
Hepburn: nise chūgokugo,
pinyin: wěi zhōng guó yǔ) is a form of
JapaneseInternet slang which first appeared around 2009.[1] It involves taking sentences which are grammatically
Japanese and stripping away the
hiragana and
katakana, leaving only the
kanji behind, which causes the resultant sentence to appear
Chinese. The phenomenon has spread to China, where Chinese speakers can often guess the meaning of the sentences despite not knowing Japanese. Taiwan's
Central News Agency has hailed pseudo-Chinese as a new platform for Sino-Japanese communication.[2]
This style of writing can lead to idiosyncratic word choices. For example, 非常感謝 (much appreciated) may be rendered as 大変感謝; while
感謝 (gratitude) is common to both languages,
非常 is used as an
intensifier in Chinese whereas
大変 serves the same purpose in Japanese.[3] Commentators on
Baidu have noticed the similarity between pseudo-Chinese and
Classical Chinese, with such expressions as 貴方明日何処行? 'Where will you go tomorrow?'.[1] This is not a coincidence; the
Japanese writing system arose as an adaptation of
classical Chinese writing.