Wacky Japanese word: ヤバい ("Yabai")
[Disclaimer: I hate Japanese grammer. I am also ignorant of historical background of my first language. Everything you read about grammer and history herein could be all wrong. So could be everything else. When in doubt, check with your Japanese teacher.]
As far as I know, this term was originally used by Yakuza. At that time it pretty much meant "heat is on", "something's wrong", "somthing's got screwed up" etc.
Over the decades it spread over the ordinary citizens and basically meant the same thing. You could use this when you woke up thirty minutes late (Yabai!), completely forgot your homework or your presentation (Yabai!!!), had your parner walk in on you when you are, ah, chillin' with someone else (Choooooo Yabai!!!!!).
But in the last decade, young Japanese somehow reversed its meaning (interestingly, young Americans are pretty much doing the same thing with the English word "sick"). For them, ヤバい means "cool", "good", "something you have to own", or "sick" in aforementioned meaning. This is more commonly used among hip-hop crowd, so when you see a Japanese college kid wearing his cap in 45 degrees saying "このCD/DVDヤバいよ。", what s/he means is probably "this CD/DVD is so cool", not that said CD/DVD is a stolen property.
Whichever the meaning, this word should be avoided in proper occasions or business settings (unless you are out drinking and want to impress people with your knowledge of street Japanese)- which is exactly why I felt like writing about it (^o^)
Comments
Heh. Maji yabai! Or, even better, yabe!
I first learned Japanese from my friends and students, mostly young Japanese males. They did not teach me very proper Japanese, and it took me a long time after I got there to stop talking like I was a 19-year-old man. Actually, I still do it a lot, and I remember once when I was teaching a class of sixth graders, they were very ill-behaved that day, and I got angry, and I said something totally inappropriate--not a "bad" word but way too informal. They were stunned that I even knew how to talk like that, I think. Anyway, it was OK, because gaijin girls can get away with anything. Heh.
Which I believe means 'lets go!' but I've never been able to find the word anywhere. I guess maybe I just fail@romaji. ^^;;;