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Suteki

Suteki is a Japanese word, said to be composed of the su from subarashii 'wonderful' followed by the suffix -teki. In any case, it is usually written in Chinese characters. This has been arbitrarily assigned to writen the word suteki -- that is, there is no etymological basis for writing it this way.

The following photo, taken in the Osaka subway, shows suteki written in Chinese characters:


Suteki na manaa Chiisa na ki-kubari
Mina de kizukĊ 'Imeeji appu Oosaka'

Good manners, attention to small needs
Let's everyone build it up: 'Improve the image of Osaka'

A subway station in Osaka sported the following sign, obviously as part of the same campaign. However, suteki is written in hiragana as :


Midori no Oosaka
Suteki na manaa
Kuriin chika-tetsu
Green Osaka
Good manners
Clean subway

A Google search in September 2003 revealed the following distribution for suteki:

Form
No. of occurrences
2,190,000
252,000
570,000
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