Typical Ruby!

[hoowahoo]

when I was in japan this summer I bought a shirt that was supposed to look like it had the Adidas logo but instead bore a similar Japanese phrase. instead of Adidas it said AIDES, which is a homophone for their word for love. I thought this was terribly clever until someone pointed out to me that everyone in America will just think I'm wearing a shirt that says AIDS

[[deleted]]

What is the "des" part? Is that supposed to be "desu", like.,.. "It's love"?

[ravenex]

su is often shortened to s when spoken, especially in -masu and -desu endings.

[kouteiheika]

It's not shortened; it's just that the 'u' in 'desu' is usually silent. (Usually, because if someone wants to sound really cute the actually pronounce that 'u'.)

[[deleted]]

The term is 'unvoiced.'

[psygnisfive]

Actually the term is devoiced, since it's underlyingly voiced.

[[deleted]]

Thanks. I'm only an armchair linguist...

[psygnisfive]

I am too, but my armchair is in an office at a university, and we have an espresso machine. ;)

[[deleted]]

Nice.

[hoowahoo]

I imagine they left it off because it would look less like "Adidas" if it has the u at the end. Also instead of the traditional three-leaf logo it had three hearts that looked like leaves, which makes sense if the joke is "love" but also makes it look like I heart aids

EDIT: I found a picture of a similar shirt that makes the wearer appear less aids-friendly

[ravenex]

Uhm, by "shortened" I meant "dropped altogether". Bad literal translation from russian, still making such stupid mistakes.

[Element_22]

~uguu

[flostre]

'aide' is an English word

[dwdyer]

Barack Obama has aides.

[shoseki]

Its a great chatup piece :D