Monday, October 24, 2016

同性社交性 - homosociality

Many sociological terms lack decent equivalents in Japanese.  It seems the order of the day to get away with some clumsy Katakanese but to me it feels very unsatisfying ( 物足りない). In that sense, Chinese, having no other way but to render foreign words in relevant characters, shows more effort and creativity. Yet, character usage does differ between Chinese and Japanese and Som Chinese neologisms feel a bit of a stretch or not quite there.

One example: homosociality. The Japanese Wikipedia article is titled ホモソーシャル, which is not just a mere phonetic rendering, but is not even a noun. What's the noun from this then, ホモソーシャル性?Doh.

The Chinese term is 同性友愛. Makes a lot of sense,  doesn't it? But then it excludes a plethora hierarchical homosocial relationships, which are neither about friendship or love, or friendly love.

My suggestion  for a term with the coverage more or less equivalent to the English original is 同性社交性 or 同性関係性. What do you think?


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