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Japanese company and product names have a different æsthetic in their use of English to American or European ones. For example, “Soft” is way more common there as an abbreviation of “Software”, even if it's not unheard of in the West — you've all heard of Microsoft!

Why is this?

English is a syllable-based language.

The word “software” in English is two syllables:

soft · ware

This is easy and quick for an English speaker to pronounce, but it should be noted that those syllables are both pretty complicated, lots of consonants and vowels:

/ˈsɒftˌwɛə/

Japanese on the other hand uses morae, which are usually only one consonant, one vowel, so “software” becomes rendered as:

ソ・フ・ト・ウェ・ア
so·fu·to·we·a

You can pronounce many Japanese morae quicker than most English syllables, but this word is still longer overall!

But if you abbreviate it to just “soft”:

ソ・フ・ト
so·fu·to

That's as quick to say as:

soft · ware
/ˈsɒftˌwɛə/

At least, speaking from our own experience.

And so that's probably why Japan has “AliceSoft”, “MonolithSoft”, and many kinds of “soft” (noun meaning “software”)!

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