Monday, May 10, 2010

ダメジャー

dameja-, "it is bad."

Visiting Japan as a guest, one will find out many words are new, fresh, often being amazed by the sense of creation. ダメジャー is one of them. This is a title for a unique section on a Sunday's TV program. It deals with Japanese baseball players' activities in MLB. In Japanese, MLB is メジャー, and by adding ダ in front, now it is dame-ja, "(it) is bad". A wonderful word-play with a good humor.

However, on-line dictionaries tell us that this is actually one of a few usages in this word. Others includs ways of use to refer horse-racing and online games. I am wonderig who first invented this word.