Dial M for Men

19 August 2022

I feel like I am fluent in a dying language. A language that flourished very briefly in Japan’s 1990s.

A language born of necessity, before people could type on a cell phone, heck, before there were cell phones like those we know and love today.

And, I admit, it is an unnamed language. (I had the devil’s time researching it online, and my husband, formerly fluent i it as well, knows of no name for it either.)

It’s a language written only in numbers. A cross between a code and a word game, falling under the broad rubric of 語呂合わせ (goro awase) in Japanese, a phrase that encompasses any word play from puns and Spoonerisms to substitution codes like the language I refer to.

The code relies on the syllabic nature of the Japanese language. In English, we consider syllables, too, especially in poetic meters. But whereas the letter is the foundation of spelling in English, in Japanese that foundation is syllables.

Below is a romanized version of the syllable table I memorized early in my Japanese studies, using the system of romanization devised by my professor, Dr E. Harz-Jorden, to make verb conjugations easier—a story for another day.

Some notes:

1. Letters in parentheses are the voiced versions of the consonant in the preceding row—a voiced K sounds like a G, for example—and an H can be voiced in two ways: B and P.
2. Not all consonants can be paired with all vowels.
3. N is the only consonant that exists on its own as a syllable in Japanese.
4. The Y column of syllables can be combined with other syllables in the I row. For example, ti + ya = tya(pronounced as cha). I found the R Y combinations, rya, ryu, and ryo particularly hard to master because Japanese Rs are pronounced at the front of the mouth and in English they are pronounced closer to the throat.
5. There is a glottal stop in Japanese which effectively emphasizes any following syllable’s consonant because the air flow halts before its pronunciation. That is romanized as a double consonant, as in bikkuri, the word for a shock or surprise.

You might be wondering how that many syllables could work with numbers.

The language or code I learned was originally developed for use with pagers. Adorable side note: one word for pager in Japanese was ポケットベル (poketto beru, pocket bell), abbreviated to ポケベル (pokeberu) because the Japanese language loves a good four-syllable abbreviation.

The code relies on three different pronunciation systems. You might know how to count to three in Japanese: ichi, ni, san. Those are Japanized versions of the Chinese pronunciations (as they existed 1500 years ago when the Japanese were first exposed to Chinese). Every number has a native Japanese pronunciation, too. Counting to three can also sound like: hi, fu, mi. And thirdly we have pronunciations based on the English sounds for the numbers. All together, the number of possible numeric syllables is large.

Note: If the number’s pronunciation exceeds one syllable, only the first syllable is used for the code.

Why did numeric codes arise for pagers?

Pagers allowed anyone calling them to transmit numbers, and only numbers. Usually, that was just a phone number. If I saw a phone number on my pager, I immediately found a pay phone and called whichever client had paged me.

But the codes allowed you to send simple messages, such as the following.

0906                遅れる (okureru)                    I’m running late

4510                仕事 (shigoto)                         work, or I’m at work.

4649                よろしく (yoroshiku)             thanks for your help

8649                よろしく (yoroshiku)             thanks for your help

5963                ご苦労さん (gokurōsan)        you must be tired

3341                寂しい (samishī)                     I’m lonely

0833                お休み (oyasumi)                   good night

0840                お早う (ohayō)                       good morning

1009                センキュー (senkyū)              thank you

These responses did not need to be four digits, however. Some were shorter, some were longer.

39                    サンキュー (sankyū)              thank you

106841            テル欲しい (teru hoshī)        I want you to call me

49                    至急 (shikyū)                          it’s urgent

14106              愛してる (ai shiteru)             I love you

Next issue, out on August 29, will continue this topic, because these numeric word plays expanded into a world of electronic cruising created AND maintained by NTT, Japan’s phone company, called Q2 Dial. Let me just say that my favorite Q2 Dial exchange was 2101-0213, the passcode for which was 4804.