2010年9月23日木曜日

What “Freeter” Is

If you write the Japanese word フリーター in English, it would be “freeter” (both singular and plural), and that means a person or people who work(s) part-time.
Once one of my English teachers asked me what “freeter” was.
I wasn’t able to explain that then because it’s really complicated.
Let me try it here.
Freeter is a shortened version of “freearbeiter”.
“Free” is from the English word “freelancing”, and “arbeit” is from the German word “arbeiten”(work).
Then, the last part “er” is the English way to make nouns from verbs. For example, play and player.
Arbeiten is pronounced arubaito in Japan, which means part time job(s). The origin is that medical students used to say they “arbeiten” when they cut corpses to study human bodies. They meant it was hard work. My father (who is a surgeon) used to say that cutting corpse heads in two is tiring activity. Japanese medical students studied German because early Japanese medical information was from Germany. This word has spread and been changed to mean 'part time work'.
Anyway, “arbeiter” means “part time worker” now.
In this word “freeter”, “free” means “without permanent position” or “freelancing”, and many young people can’t get permanent positions recently. Most of them become freeter. You might think “freelancing” implies independence and flexibility, but these people only have instability. They can earn little.
This is a big problem in Japan. I guess your country might be so, too.

Thank you.



Koir, Columbine, dogsbody70, ColinHowell and JamboP26, thanks a lot!

1 件のコメント:

  1. This is also a big problem,that the difference in the number of young people are not going to work as a freeter,rather go to unemployment benefits.He did not try to recover, "then the parents are dependent on them."Very few young people are going to work part-time, at least until find a job.

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