Abbreviating 'Super Saiyan'...

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Abbreviating 'Super Saiyan'...

Post by JulieYBM » Sun Feb 06, 2011 10:03 pm

...a discussion I don't see pop up much, surprisingly so. While I've always written 'Super Saiyan' for the long form I have a habit of short-handing it to 'SSj' (totally stole it from Kaboom, by the way), including the 'j' from '-jin'. When one actually applies thought to this...it seems inconsistent. I know there's always the chance one might mistake it for a boat (or the Enterprise :P), but should one really be stopped from just using plain ol' 'SS#'?

Anyone else feel up to sharing their own thoughts?
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Re: Abbreviating 'Super Saiyan'...

Post by Herms » Sun Feb 06, 2011 10:06 pm

I see it kinda like how the abbreviation of "pound" is "lb", short for "libra". These things don't always have to be perfectly consistent.
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Re: Abbreviating 'Super Saiyan'...

Post by Gaffer Tape » Sun Feb 06, 2011 10:12 pm

My thoughts? The Enterprise (assuming we're talking about the awesome line of starships) is a USS, so I doubt there's any cause for concern that S.S. Goku is a commissioned Starfleet vessel. Other than that, I use SSJ. I just think it sounds better.
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Re: Abbreviating 'Super Saiyan'...

Post by Kiyza » Sun Feb 06, 2011 10:13 pm

Herms wrote:I see it kinda like how the abbreviation of "pound" is "lb", short for "libra". These things don't always have to be perfectly consistent.
I'm with Herms on this one. And then there's the fact that a lot of people just use Saiya-jin anyway. And you know, "SS" happens to be used by a quite a few other things, most notably the Secret Service, certain ships, and Nazis.

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Re: Abbreviating 'Super Saiyan'...

Post by CODii » Sun Feb 06, 2011 10:37 pm

Since so much of language is completely arbitrary, I feel totally justified in saying I prefer "ssj" because it simply looks better than "ss" to my eyes.

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Re: Abbreviating 'Super Saiyan'...

Post by CatouttaHell » Mon Feb 07, 2011 12:25 am

I personally use SSjin, I don't even remember at this point who I ripped that abbreviation from. :(
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Re: Abbreviating 'Super Saiyan'...

Post by Kaboom » Mon Feb 07, 2011 12:27 am

I use "SSj" rather than "SS" for the same boat-related reason as anybody else.
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Re: Abbreviating 'Super Saiyan'...

Post by kei17 » Mon Feb 07, 2011 1:41 am

"SS" is more common than "SSJ" among the Japanese DB fans, but I personally prefer "SSJ" because I find some kind of respect for the original Japanese version in "J".

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Re: Abbreviating 'Super Saiyan'...

Post by TheDevilsCorpse » Mon Feb 07, 2011 1:54 am

I use Super Saiyan instead of Super Saiya-jin, so I use SS instead of SSJ if for no other reason that I prefer internal consistency.
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Re: Abbreviating 'Super Saiyan'...

Post by Puto » Mon Feb 07, 2011 2:02 am

I keep flipping back and forth with SS and SSJ. And sometimes SSj too. Don't really think about it, I guess.
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Re: Abbreviating 'Super Saiyan'...

Post by PuppetDoctor » Mon Feb 07, 2011 2:28 am

I always use "SSJ." It was the way I always saw Super Saiyan abbreviated so I just picked it up and began to write it that way. I also think it looks nicer as SSJ too.

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Post by AnimeMaakuo » Mon Feb 07, 2011 2:54 am

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Re: Abbreviating 'Super Saiyan'...

Post by Mountain » Mon Feb 07, 2011 3:33 am

Back in the day, I always used 'ssj', though I'd most probably prefer 'SSj' today. I'm not entirely sure, as I usually switch between 'Super Saiyan' and 'Super Saiya-jin' when referring to the transformation. I just recall using 'ssj2 Gohan', for example, very frequently.

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Re: Abbreviating 'Super Saiyan'...

Post by Ashy-kun » Mon Feb 07, 2011 5:43 am

I'm surprised yet somewhat amused that the more frequent reason here seems to be that they don't want their precious SS Gokuu or SS Gohan being mistaken for a water-faring vessel, instead of the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, super strong, superman/choujin/Übermensch referred to as an "SS" being mistaken for, you know, someone in association with the Third Reich and the things most people would call "evil"?

... Oh, wait, that's right, the "SS" thing is an American. We tend to call them "HMS". But then people will now mistake "Oozaru" for a boat, because I abbreviate "Huge Monkey Saiyan" to HMS...
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Re: Abbreviating 'Super Saiyan'...

Post by Michsi » Mon Feb 07, 2011 6:38 am

I use SSJ because I've seen it everywhere and thought this was the general acceptat abbreviation. Didn't think too much of it. :?

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Re: Abbreviating 'Super Saiyan'...

Post by TripleRach » Mon Feb 07, 2011 8:45 am

I rarely use abbreviations like this in any important situation. But when I do abbreviate, I prefer "SSJ," despite the fact that I started using "Super Saiyan" as the full spelling years ago. When I first got into the fandom, "SSJ" was what everyone used at the time. And when I see it, my brain even reads it as "Super Saiyajin" instead of "ess ess jay." But when I see "SS," my brain only reads it as "ess ess," probably because I've spent most of my life with it being pronounced "ess ess" in other contexts (like boats).

It's all pretty silly, but I don't see the point in putting extra effort into using new abbreviations, since that kind of defeats the purpose of abbreviations in the first place.

On a vaguely related note, whenever I see "WSJ," I first think "Weekly Shounen Jump." But it usually turns out they were referring to the Wall Street Journal.
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Re: Abbreviating 'Super Saiyan'...

Post by TheGreatness25 » Mon Feb 07, 2011 9:01 am

I just write it out. I don't think that shortening it from 12 letters (including the space) to two letters is super time-saving or super productive, so I just write it out. I can see why people would write it as "SSJ" though because ever since I was like 11, I would see online descriptions, summaries, and even fan fiction (which was trying to pass itself off as being real) which all used "SSJ," so it's definitely something that many are used to. But if someone were to abbreviate it as "SS," I really doubt that I'd be so thrown off and just be out of the realm of knowing what one is referring to.

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Re: Abbreviating 'Super Saiyan'...

Post by MCDaveG » Mon Feb 07, 2011 9:25 am

I write it as SSJ simply because as fans of this series watching it in Europe with German dub, we were knowing this form as Super Saiyajin. Whoever wrote the script, used the term from Japanese maybe without knowing what jin stands for, because German version is based upon the french and they were using Super Warriors.
Same the Saiyans were called Saiyajin. We then used also Tsufurujin. Only for Nameks we used ''Namekian'' (Námečan) :)
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Re: Abbreviating 'Super Saiyan'...

Post by Piccolo Daimao » Mon Feb 07, 2011 1:20 pm

I saw Kaboom using "SSj" and adopted it, for some reason. Before that, I used what most fans used: "SSJ", because that's how I always saw it abbreviated. I tried using "SS" for a while for consistency's sake, but I wasn't comfortable with it and felt like it was missing that extra little "j". But Nazis or boats never pop into my mind when I see someone using "SS". Since it's on a Dragon Ball forum, I just think, "He's talking about Super Saiyan." It's all about context. :wink:
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Re: Abbreviating 'Super Saiyan'...

Post by kaialone » Mon Feb 07, 2011 1:45 pm

I use SSJ since I say Super Saiyajin ,too. Also simply "SS" is a little too short for my taste.
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