‘Moshi Moshi’ is an abbreviation of ‘Mosu Mosu’ (the Japanese verb ‘to speak’). Today’s problem? You guess it! ‘Why say ‘Moshi-Moshi’ twice on the phone?įirst up, let’s look at the word. An audience of more celebrities listens to the salespitch: I’ll tell you the answer to this really interesting problem, if you pay me 1000 yen (about 5 pounds)! The celebrities then decide, on the basis of the salespitch, whether they want to hear the answer to the problem. It’s called ‘Riyuu Aru Tarou’ (‘The guy with the Reason’, or something like that) on which the celebrities and comedians on the gameshow compete against one another to earn money. I was introduced to this game show a couple of weeks ago. But, as fortune would have it, Koichi’s well-researched and plausible reasons for why Japanese people say ‘Moshi-Moshi’ when they answer the phone are quite different from mine! Why do Japanese people say ‘Moshi-Moshi’ twice? Little did he know that I’d had this exact same topic brewing the vaults of my WordPress blog for sometime, after learning about it in one of my Japanese listening classes. ![]() So Koichi over at Tofugu just recently published an article on the meaning of the words ‘Moshi Moshi’ in Japanese. But why on earth say it twice? Isn’t once enough for you? Today I explain the reason for that giving oft-uttered phrase in a double dose.
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