Pokemon wordplay

Japanese
#1

Pokemon loves using wordplay in its naming convention, from the rubbish (Flamigo = flamingo amigo) to the excellent (Pikachu = spark squeak).

But it can also help me to learn or remember Japanese.

Mirai (far future) just came up in my N4 vocabulary deck, and it reminded me of Miraidon, the bike Pokemon from the far future in the Scarlet/Violet game.

I looked up Koraidon, the bike Pokemon from the distant past, to see if there’s anything going on there, and sure enough korai means ancient.

If anyone has any other helpful Japanese Poke-mnemonics that they know of, please post them here!

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#2

Caterpie is like a cute caterpillar: ピー! :bug:

2 Likes
#3

Beedrill is a bee. A bee with a drill. Beedrill.

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#4

bulbasaur is fushigidane, strange seed, and ivysaur is fushigisou, strange plant, and then venusaur is fushigibana, strange flower

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#5

That’s excellent :smiley:

And Fushigi is an N4 vocab word too, so that will help me!

And in the Pokemon TCG card game, the Basic level pokemon are called “tane” = seed

4 Likes
#6

Omg I always understood fushigidane as like “fushigi da ne/fushigi desu ne” but in hindsight it makes more sense that it’s just tane with rendaku lol

5 Likes
#7

I guess another famous one would be ditto, which is called メタモン, I’m assuming a mix of metamorph and monster. Not so good for learning japanese though.

The eeveelution names are super lame imo. Vaporeon is called “showers” lol

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