If you did your daily Wordle this past Monday (June 10), you would have encountered the word manga. To me, this is a common-ish word that I even use when talking to my parents, but to others, this was an affront to the English language.
If you’re not deeply immersed in geek or Japanese culture, the word might not be familiar to you. It is a category of comic books used to denote that it is stylistically Japanese. While some would argue that only comics that originate from Japan qualify as manga, it has been applied to some works created outside the country but made in a similar style.
As writer Dan Nyugen found and compiled on Twitter, some Wordle fans were incensed by the inclusion of the word. “I never heard of this word and is not well known English language,” strained one user.
New York Times Staff Editor Toni Monkovic waded into the comments to try and explain how the word was selected, stating that “MANGA cleared all three hurdles we use to decide what goes in the bot’s dictionary.” He also added that “Manga has around 740 mentions in the NYT since 2000, much more than enough for the bot. But … It’s worth noting that it has only around 75 mentions from 1976 to 2000.” So, if you stopped learning words after Y2K, you might not know it.
Obviously, the slew of perturbed comments are skewed to complaints because that’s what people post online. Not many are just going to comment that they thought the word was acceptable. However, the lack of knowledge about it is another reminder that I live in a different world from some people. Most bookstores I frequent now have a section specifically for manga, with graphic novels sometimes mixed in with them.
And yes, the manga is a Japanese loanword. Most languages have a habit of incorporating words from other languages, and English is rife with them. For example, one of Wordle’s previous puzzles was “sushi,” another Japanese loanword. It’s not like they used something more obscure like “ecchi.” I shudder to think of what will happen the day that “anime” shows up in the shuffle.
