• Dojan@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      This is true, I don’t know which word came first. I’d wager a guess that 蚤の市 predates フリーマーケット, but it’s really just a stab in the dark on the basis that English loanwords feel more modern, and it feels unlikely that a calque would be created after a loanword has been widely adopted.

      • manucode@infosec.pub
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        6 months ago

        I assume that 蚤の市 is a loan word and フリーマーケット a calque. But I don’t speak any Japanese.

        • randint
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          6 months ago

          No, it’s the other way around. 蚤 means flea and 市 means market. フリーマーケット sounds like flea market.

      • Dojan@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        蚤の市

        Yep! nomi no ichi. Nomi (蚤) means flea, and ichi (市) means market, no (の) is a possessive particle making it “flea’s market” or “market of flea”