The Meaning of Bito?

[Super Kindai]

Quote: Originally Posted by weesec01 It is a very interesting topic, which I have never asked or thought before! Direct translate for the word "Bito" in Chinese/could be related to kanji from dictionary show bito=bitotree "鱼毒木"; by word, it means "Fish, Poison, tree/wood". In chinese, the word "Fish" is clear cut means fish, "Poison" could be meant that addicted, and emm...the word for "tree" should be deleted. So, my conjecture of the whole meaning of "Koi-Bito" could be meant that "A person who is addicted to Koi".

Hito ---> ○○ Bito..... "Bito" is same way like "Koi --> ○○ Goi "　

so, you could figure it out by "Hito" instead of Bito.

and also the same kanji (人）would pronounce as "ren" in Chinese....

[aquitori]

"Bito" is a term we use here in East San Jose when ordering a Burrito...Instead of saying the whole thing we say Bito..."Hey Miguel, I'll have a bito with everything"...

[Steve Nguyen]

it's a fruit.

Steve

Quote: Originally Posted by The Pond Digger Can someone enlighten me as to the meaning of the word Bito? Thanks, The Pond Digger

[kingkong]

Something to drink with your 'Bito' Tony.

[Brian]

Quote: Originally Posted by MCA it is a play on words as I remember from Brian, sort of love-love.

Indeed it was a play on words...a pretty unique one at the time, but it was unfortunately hijacked by a third party, who shall go unnamed without so much as a heads-up or a nod in my direction. But then I digress...

Anyway, as the others have mentioned, "Bito" is the "stressed" pronunciation in Japanese for the word "Hito". The stressing comes when words are compounded together and is done to make the the flow and pronunciation work better for the speaker.

人 = Hito (person)
日本人　Nihon-jin (Japanese person)
旅人 Tabi-Bito　(Traveller)

To a Japanese person, the word "Koi-Bito" would mean a boy/girlfriend, and is written as: 恋人 the first Chinese character means love, the second means person. So I had a little play on words and came up with 鯉人　which literally means "koi person", but the nuance of the pronunciation still makes it sound like lover.

Put the whole thing together, and the idea was to conjure up the image of someone hopelessly in love with koi. I think that pretty accurately describes those that frequent this board.

[JasPR]

very interesting

[The Pond Digger]

Thanks for the great explaination Brian.

Respectfully,

The Pond Digger

[weesec01]

Thanks Brian, Very meaningful

[schildkoi]

Quote: To a Japanese person, the word "Koi-Bito" would mean a boy/girlfriend

Thanks for your verification above to Cheryl's posting of:

Quote: Well I am not real positive on this but I was once told that koibito meant sweetheart such as girlfriend/boyfriend in kanji Maybe Brian can give us a more indepth answer.

Its nice to say that we actually got something out of our middle daughter's college education. In this case her foriegn language class...Japanese!

Steve