nisei means a person born outside of Japan of parents who were born in Japan. Lexicurio rates it Rare gem — a strength score of 83 out of 100.
nisei is pronounced /ˈniseɪ/.
Why “nisei” is a great word
NISEI — [Noun] A person born in a country outside Japan, especially in the Americas, to parents who emigrated from Japan. Borrowed from Japanese 二世 (nisei), from 二 (ni, "second") + 世 (sei, "generation"). Unlike issei, the immigrant generation bearing the remembered landscape of Japan, or sansei, the third generation for whom the ancestral homeland is a story, the nisei embodies a profound tension. It is the texture of a hand that has never worked a rice paddy but knows how to fold a furoshiki cloth, the taste of a homemade bento packed in a factory lunchbox, and the quiet burden of translating the outside world for one's parents—a permanent citizen of the hyphen, anchored in neither shore.
noun
- a person born outside of Japan of parents who were born in Japan
- One whose parents were Japanese immigrants, especially to North or South America.“Born and brought tip mostly in South America, the United States (particularly Hawaii) and Canada, the nisei and sansei have Japanese features but often speak the language imperfectly, if at all.”