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by Lammy·10mo ago·view on hn ↗
> A Japanese audience was probably even less inclined to learn yet another loanword to preserve that technical distinction.

That's what I mean, though, is that my internalized idea of cassette == tape was the one that was wrong. It was one of those words I learned incorrectly as a child based on the observation that everything adults called “cassettes” had magnetic tape in common, not realizing that “cassette” is describing the enclosure instead of the contents and literally means “little box” (case-ette). Nintendo were using it correctly and taught me something in the process and that's why I think it's cool and wanted to share.

2 comments
Japanese is full of loanwords precisely because those good folks on the other side of the world find so many things about Western culture fascinating.

My Japanese father-in-law even played QB and Safety for his university's American-style football team in the 80s and grew up as a fan of Jack Lambert and Mean Joe Greene.

Many people in Japan are just as much "Americanophiles" as some of us are "Japanophiles".

Their word for (part time) job (as opposed to career position) is literally the German word for "work": arbeit. Of course transliterated with some minor phonetic loss, but that's expected.
For a counterexample in the other direction, the 8-track system uses "cartridge" for its enclosure-with-audio-on-magnetic-tape object.