We call it – Presentation

It’s no secret that Pokemon are named differently in America (or English speaking countries) than in Japan. In this presentation, I introduce five different Pokemon and their respective names using the grammar point of “call”. Throughout the presentation I use the words of “In America, we call it…” Please change it to fit your country of origin!

We start off with Pikachu, whose name is the same all around the world. I show the Japanese and then replace it with English.

In the next slide, I wanted to show a slight difference with the names, The next Pokemon is Emolga (English) or Emonga/エモンガ (Japanese). It’s just a letter off, with “N” becoming a “L”. My students were unimpressed and understood that those little changes happen all the time. No big deal.

For the third Pokemon we have one of the original starter Pokemon. In English, the Pokemon is called Bulbasaur. A complete departure from the Japanese of Fushigidane/フシギダネ. It’s very funny seeing my students try to wrap their brains around the word “Bulbasaur”. With this pokemon and the ones to follow, I told them that many Pokemon in English are combinations of words. For Bulbasaur, I told them that the name is a combo of the word “bulb” like a plant bulb and “dinosaur”.

For the 4th Pokemon, in Japanese it is “Kabigon/カビゴン” and in English “Snorlax”. The big Pokemon likes to sleep and “snore”. He also only wants to “relax” Hence, how we get the name of “Snorlax”.

The last one is part of the newest set of Pokemon. Habani/ヒバニー in Japanese and Scorbunny in English. Scorbunny has the power/type of fire. “Scorch”  and “bunny” combine into Scorbunny.

And at the very end of the slide, I return all the five Pokemon to the main screen and see if the kids can remember them all. I also try to encourage the students to use the phrase of “In America, they call it…” and then flip it “I call it…”, “We call it…” or “In Japan, we call it…”

I do hope you like Pokemon! If you don’t, I suggest faking it and hope they don’t ask specific questions about Pokemon. But, if they do you could always look up the differences here!