Pants?

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Karen Sandness

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Apr 18, 2012, 6:14:02 PM4/18/12
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I'm doing what is apparently a back translation of a fashion spread, and one of the items listed is パンツ, captioning an illustration of a model wearing cargo pants.

Now I always thought that パンツ without any kind of modifier referred to underwear, but since I haven't been to Japan for five years, this could have changed.

Would contemporary Japanese use パンツ as a generic term for trousers, slacks, cargo pants, jeans, etc.? I'd like some advice from those of you currently living in Japan. Thanks!

One leg at a timely yours,
Karen Sandness

Eleanor Goldsmith

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Apr 18, 2012, 6:21:07 PM4/18/12
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Karen Sandness wrote:
> Would contemporary Japanese use パンツ as a generic term for trousers,
slacks, cargo pants, jeans, etc.? I'd like some advice from those of you
currently living in Japan. Thanks!

Hi Karen, I similarly haven't been in Japan for the last five years, but
Wikipedia's Japanese entry for パンツ says that it's all in the intonation:

上記2つの意味で使われるため、どちらの意味で使われているかは文脈などから判断
しなければならない。日本国内ではズボンを「パンツ」(平板型)、下着を「パン
ツ」(頭高型)と呼んで区別したり、下着のパンツを特に「アンダーパンツ」と呼ん
だりする(各太字はアクセント核)。

HTH

Yours with the last mora high,

Eleanor Goldsmith
Auckland, NZ

Masako Sato

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Apr 18, 2012, 6:39:36 PM4/18/12
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Good morning.

It seems there's no problem calling pants a パンツ.

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%E3%83%91%E3%83%B3%E3%83%84 


Masako Sato

Yoshiro Shibasaki

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Apr 18, 2012, 6:45:03 PM4/18/12
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Isn't it the American usage of the word, pants?

American: pants
British: trousers

American: underpants
British: pants


Yoshi
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English/German/Danish/Japanese (biomedical sciences)

Karen Sandness

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Apr 18, 2012, 6:51:25 PM4/18/12
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Yes, and this is for a U.S.-based company that wants to sell its clothes in Japan.

Linguistic dividely yours,
Karen Sandness

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Susan Murata

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Apr 18, 2012, 8:06:07 PM4/18/12
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Uniqlo uses "bottoms" ボトムス, and "pants", パンツ, but pants is always
qualified with something such as カットパンツ

http://www.uniqlo.com/jp/

Hope this helps,

Susan Murata

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min_sakurauchi

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Apr 18, 2012, 8:44:24 PM4/18/12
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私は若くはないで「パンツ」=「下着」すが、アクセントは別として(Eleanor
Goldsmithさんご指摘の通りのようです)、息子/娘からの情報によると、書
く文章においては、若い人の間では「パンツ」=「ズボン」になってきた いみ
たいです。多分アメリカからの影響でしょう。
もっと詳しいニュアンスの違いなどは、もっと若いNSJに譲ります。

M. Sakurauchi

Wayne Root

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Apr 18, 2012, 10:39:05 PM4/18/12
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I thought the British for the stated "pants (i.e. underpants) " was "knickers." Harking back to my days in the US Army you would never have used the word "pants," it was always "trousers."  "Men do not wear pants, they wear trousers."

Doreen Simmons

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Apr 18, 2012, 11:10:30 PM4/18/12
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On 19/04/2012, Wayne Root <roo...@astound.net> wrote:
> I thought the British for the stated "pants (i.e. underpants) " was
> "knickers." Harking back to my days in the US Army you would never have used
> the word "pants," it was always "trousers." "Men do not wear pants, they
> wear trousers."

To me, 'knickers' is very much out of date; it refers to a garment
with little legs with elastic (descended, presumably, from the
original bloomers) ; went out when panties got more like two-piece
swimsuit bottoms.

FWIW, Doreen

Chris Poole

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Apr 18, 2012, 11:24:49 PM4/18/12
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Wha?

 

Australians call them “underpants”.

“Pants” are pretty well any sort of trousers, but not underwear.

“Knickers” is a delicate and sort of funny word for women’s underwear, not men’s.

 

JFYI

 

Chris

Yumiko Funatsu

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Apr 19, 2012, 5:01:55 AM4/19/12
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Hi Karen,

As already mentioned here, パンツ used to used to refer underwear.
Recently, パンツ is also used to refer trousers, slacks and carg pants
especially in the fashion industry.

However, I don't know why, we don't use パンツ for jeans. We use デニム
instead of パンツ for jeans.

Normally, the meaning of パンツ may differ depending on who uses it.
For example, for kids (maybe for olders), パンツ means underweare. I used
to say to my daughter, "はやくぱんつはきなさい!" after taking a bath when she was
a baby.


HTH,

Yumiko

Jonathan Michaels

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Apr 19, 2012, 7:45:50 AM4/19/12
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On Apr 19, 6:01 pm, Yumiko Funatsu <yumi...@da2.so-net.ne.jp> wrote:
> I used
> to say to my daughter, "はやくぱんつはきなさい!" after taking a bath when she was
> a baby.

I read this and thought to myself, "ahh, but of course she'd speak to
her baby daughter in hiragana, because she wouldn't understand
katakana or kanji yet!"

(Sorry for the digression—just wanted to share the laugh I got from
the absurdity of my own initial reaction. I immediately imagined a
cute little two-panel comic strip with a mother saying 「早くパンツを履きなさい!」,
a baby responding with a thought bubble full of confused question
marks, and the mother "rephrasing" as above.)

Jonathan

----------
Jonathan Michaels
Mito, Japan

Alan Siegrist

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Apr 19, 2012, 8:37:42 AM4/19/12
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Yumiko Funatsu writes:

> However, I don't know why, we don't use パンツ for jeans.
> We use デニム instead of パンツ for jeans.

Are you forgetting ジーパン(Gパン)?

I assume ジーパン was originally a shortening of ジーンズ・パンツ.

Regards,

Alan Siegrist
Carmel, CA, USA

Yumiko Funatsu

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Apr 20, 2012, 3:57:38 AM4/20/12
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Alan,

You remind me that we have two words for jeans; デニム and ジーパン。Thanks!


I often find デニム in a little-bit "snob" fashion magazin.
ジーパン is often used for daily conversation.

Yumiko Funatsu

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Apr 20, 2012, 4:02:51 AM4/20/12
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Jonathan,

> (Sorry for the digression—just wanted to share the laugh I got from
> the absurdity of my own initial reaction. I immediately imagined a
> cute little two-panel comic strip with a mother saying 「早くパンツを履きなさい!」,
> a baby responding with a thought bubble full of confused question
> marks, and the mother "rephrasing" as above.)

Yeah, this is what I exactly had. ;-)

Yumiko

Benjamin Barrett

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Apr 20, 2012, 4:21:59 AM4/20/12
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It seems reasonable that デニム (meaning the clothing) maps onto "denims," and ジーンズ and ジーパン map onto "jeans."

Benjamin Barrett
Seattle, WA

Doreen Simmons

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Apr 20, 2012, 10:03:08 PM4/20/12
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Yumiko,

'Denim' is high fashion at the moment, and refers to the cloth, not simply jeans made with it. Only a week ago (or thereabouts) there was on TV a fashion parade of models wearing 'Japanese denim' -- and for the first time in my life I was impressed. Some of the men's suits and women's dresses looked really nice. Whereas all my adult life I have worn jeans only for heavy digging.

Doreen

2012/4/20 Yumiko Funatsu <yum...@da2.so-net.ne.jp>

Richard Sadowsky

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Apr 24, 2012, 7:21:18 AM4/24/12
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Apparently in fashion these days there is no stigma whatsoever about using
パンツ for women's slacks or shorts.

Photos of front cover and first inside spread page of a Japanese magazine
for women over 40, GLOW (or GROW?) I took today:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34671/GLOW.pants1.jpg (short pants)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34671/GLOW.pants2.jpg (Cover)

Cover copy:
あなたを変える
運命のパンツは
この1本です!


However, the meaning of undershorts/underwear is still alive as evidenced
by this site and a radio commercial for Gunze Body Wild:
http://www.bodywild.com/products/bw/index.html
Radio commercial:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34671/Gunze.mp3

For fun...
Richard

At 11:03 AM +0900 04/21/12, Doreen Simmons wrote:
>Yumiko,
>
>'Denim' is high fashion at the moment, and refers to the cloth, not simply
>jeans made with it. Only a week ago (or thereabouts) there was on TV a
>fashion parade of models wearing 'Japanese denim' -- and for the first
>time in my life I was impressed. Some of the men's suits and women's
>dresses looked really nice. Whereas all my adult life I have worn jeans
>only for heavy digging.
>
>Doreen
>
>2012/4/20 Yumiko Funatsu

><<mailto:yum...@da2.so-net.ne.jp>yum...@da2.so-net.ne.jp>


>
>Alan,
>
>You remind me that we have two words for jeans; デニム and ジーパン。Thanks!
>
>
>I often find デニム in a little-bit "snob" fashion magazin.
>ジーパン is often used for daily conversation.
>
>
>On 4月19日, 午後9:37, "Alan Siegrist" <AlanFSiegr...@Comcast.net> wrote:
>> Yumiko Funatsu writes:
>> > However, I don't know why, we don't use パンツ for jeans.
>> > We use デニム instead of パンツ for jeans.
>>
>> Are you forgetting ジーパン(Gパン)?
>>
>> I assume ジーパン was originally a shortening of ジーンズ・パンツ.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Alan Siegrist
>> Carmel, CA, USA
>
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David McGrogan

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Apr 25, 2012, 11:36:34 AM4/25/12
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I think this depends on the variety of British English. I grew up in the Northwest of England and everybody said "pants" for trousers and "underpants" (or "undies") for what goes underneath.

David McGrogan
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