Ad Text in Japanese:

「あなたと、コンビに、FamilyMart」

This advertisement text looks deceptively simple, but in reality it has a fun twist just waiting for language geeks like us to discover!

「あなたと」there is nothing deceptive about this. 「あなた」means “you”, and 「と」is the particle which means “with” in this case. So, “with you”.

「コンビに」These four Kana are packed with meaning!

FamilyMart is a famous convenience store in Japan. They’re on about every corner of the major cities, and you can buy anything from business black socks, to steamed meat dumplings in case you get the munchies. In Japanese, the term for “convenience store” is 「コンビニエンスストア」, which is the English word spelled out in Katakana. As we have seen before, Japanese like to shorten things, so these days 「コンビニエンスストア」 has been shortened to 「コンビ二」.

But wait, the 「二」in 「コンビニ」is written in Hiragana in this ad… What’s going on?

The word 「コンビ」in Japanese, is the Katakana way to say “combi”, as in, “combination”. It is often used to refer to two people who complement each other, good friends, or especially in Japanese stand-up comedy known as “manzai” 漫才.

The final 「に」here is a particle, and it is using that “dropped verb” technique… The verb that is dropped is likely 「する」.

So, “becoming a combi with you”. Yet, it is a pay on the word for “convenience store”. So, FamilyMart can be your partner…

Okay. This joke gets less funny the more it is explained. So I’ll leave it at that.

- Harvey