Originally Posted by ainternational

I have a tangentially related question for those who speak (some) Japanese. Is “gran” sometimes used interchangeably to mean “grand”? Such as an NHK “gran sponsor” on a TV show or the Shinkansen “gran class”? Or is there a completely different and separate meaning unrelated to the English word “grand”? Since the Japanese love to shorten everything (make up becomes make for example), it seemed natural that gran may be short for grand. But I leave it up to the linguistic experts here to educate us all.