Thread: Kobayashi Maru
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KyleGoetz's Avatar
KyleGoetz (Offline)
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06-12-2011, 06:16 PM

You're correct, MMM.

In any case, English lacks a single thing like this, but we do have a series of "ship prefixes" depending on situation that are equivalent to -maru in Japanese: Ship prefix - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I think the closest true equivalent is "HMS" (for Her/His Majesty's Ship) in the UK. To the best of my knowledge, the HMS Titanic was not a British naval ship, but it was still prefixed by "HMS."

On the other hand, in the US, the most famous one (and most likely the only US prefix any American would know) is "USS," or "United States Ship," used only by the US Navy.

In fact, before I pulled that Wikipedia page, the only ship prefixes I knew of were USS and HMS. Well, I also know "SS," but I don't even know if that's used in modern times. It stands for "steamship."
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