Level up

2 Responses to Level up

1. Leonardo Boiko says:

   28/11/2011 at 11:41 pm

   The gaming world has a lot of these, most famously the “1-up” of Super Mario (to earn one extra life). I think -up has been productive for some time; a look at edict finds イメージアップ 、 コストアップ、スキルアップ (corporate: reskilling), バージョンアップ (software: upgrade), etc.

   Compare GET!, as in アイテムGet！ or コインGET!

   If I had to guess, I’d think it’s possible that “level up” might have started in U.S. as tabletop gaming jargon, went to Japan with the videogame-RPG boom, was re-analyzed as wasei eigo thanks to the syntax (-up becoming a predicate), and only then spread outside gaming communities. But this is pure speculation.
   • khanbaliqist says:

     29/11/2011 at 9:21 pm

     Relying on memory is a dangerous exercise, but my earliest recollection of video games in Japan goes back to around 1978, when Space Invaders (インベーダーゲーム) was already a runaway hit (I’m always a latecomer to trends like this). And as far as I can remember, レベルアップ was already a well-established term in Japanese at that time. My intuition tells me that レベルアップ far antedates the video-game boom in Japan.

     And fortunately I have a source to back me up: the 日本語発音アクセント辞典 (日本放送協会編), first published in 1966, my copy acquired in 1975, gives an アクセント for レベルアップ. So it certainly seems to predate video games.

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