DOCUMENT RESUME FL 023 841 ED 399 762 Nakagawa, Akira AUTHOR English Loanwords in the 1990's in Japan. TITLE PUB DATE [96] NOTE 21p. Research/Technical (143) Reports PUB TYPE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. EDRS PRICE College Students; *English; Foreign Countries; Higher DESCRIPTORS Education; *Japanese; *Language Patterns; *Language Role; Language Usage; *Linguistic Borrowing; Sociolinguistics *Japan; *Neologism IDENTIFIERS ABSTRACT A sociolinguistic analysis of English loan words in use in the 1990s in the discourse of young Japanese people is presented. The study drew data from a 1993 survey of undergraduate students at two Osaka (Japan) higher education institutions, one for men and one for women, which asked what loanwords students used and heard often. The report first discusses the formation and phonetic and semantic aspects of the loan words, then analyzes the survey's results. Findings show that the most common loan words students used were nouns, with only a few verbs and adjectives found. Categories and distribution of loan words differed by institution, therefore by gender group. Many coined words are constructed with English. Loan words are generally adopted even when there is a Japanese equivalent, apparently when there is a need to distinguish between the functions of the English and Japanese words. Many of the adjectives used by males were coined words. Students reported hearing fewer loan words than they reported using, and the largest category that they heard referred to social phenomena. Not many of the loan words commonly found in commercial films, magazines, and books appeared in students' considered usage. Possible reasons for adoption of loan words are briefly. Contains 19 references. (MSE) -...:**************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. 1:):..Ak******************************* *********************AA***-A*** English Loanwords in the 1990's in Japan Akira Nakagawa Eastern Washington University (A Graduate Student) _ . U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement AND PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL CENTER (ERIC) his document has been reproduced as HAS BEEN GRANTED BY received from the person or organization L(:11- originating it, Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. 1.....\,0\ AC\ Va.N.....De>-- Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent RESOURCES TO THE EDUCATIONAL official OERI position or policy. INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) BEST COPY AVAILABLE 2 Abstract This paper reports the sociolinguistic analysis of English loanwords of the 1990's in discourse among young Japanese people. First, the loanword usages are discussed considering formation, phonetic and semantic aspects. The next section analyzes the result of a questionnaire given at Osaka University of Economics and Shoin Women's College in Osaka, Japan. From the data analysis it is found that many coined-words are constructed with English, and that young people use them very frequently. On the other hand, not so many of the loanwords used in commercial films, magazines, and books are found; it seems that loanwords in discourse are different from those of commercial films, magazines, and books. As for coined- words, this phenomenon may be regarded as one of the main reasons for adopting and using loanwords in the 1990's. Acknowledgments - I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Professor Ohashi, who teaches English at Osaka University of Physical Education and Shoin Women's College, and Professor Nakagawa of Osaka University of Economics in collecting data for this study. , 3 1 INTRODUCTION 1. It is claimed by Miller (1967) that there is not any other language which adopts foreign words more than the Japanese language. Nagara (1987) has mentioned two reasons: Japanese culture is easily influenced by foreign cultures which implies a hybrid culture and that Japanese syllabary is convenient for accepting loanwords. Regarding the first reason, it is true that the culture has always depended on foreign cultures such as Chinese, Korean, Indian, and European cultures in the twentieth century. It is also true that the linguistic system easily adopts loanwords because the Japanese syllabary is phonetic. In any case, since Commander Perry visited Japan to open its territory in 1853, Japan has adopted English loanwords actively. Historically, a dialect called 'Yokohama Dialect' was used in the period right after Commander Perry's visit to Japan (Stan law, 1987). Although the dialect seemed to include both English and Japanese words, Japanese words appeared to be used more than those of English. The full-scale adaptation of English loanwords started in Meiji Era (1868-1912) because the government was so interested in Western technology for industrialization, ideas, cultures, and probably also for political reasons. Higa (1973) provides the following profile in his study of the Western loanwords in Japanese: ! Table 1' Proportions of LanguAges in Western Loanwords in Japanese . % of the Total % of the Total Language Japanese vocabulary Western Loanwords 7.92 80.8 English 0.55 5.6 French 0.31 3.3 German 0.15 1.5 Italian 0.13 Dutch 1.3 4 2 0.08 0.8 Russian 0.07 0.7 Portuguese 0.07 0.7 Spanish 0.52 5.3 Others This data was collected in the 1970's, and there is no doubt that the number of English loanwords has increased in the 1990's. In short, the economic prosperity in the 1980's and the development of communication tools such as the internet made the Japanese feel further necessity of English words. Apart from the necessity of accepting English loanwords for social needs, it seems that the Japanese tend to use English words to for neologisms. This paper discusses the trend in using English loanwords in the 1990's. 2. ENGLISH LOANWORDS IN JAPAN One of the most interesting questions is how loanwords are used by the Japanese. Several linguists have discussed it such as Quackenbush (1974), Morrow (1987), Hoffer (1990), the Japanese National Language Research Institute (1990), Takashi (1992), and Kay (1995). Among these studies the author found Hoffer (1990) most insightful. He categorized loanwords in eight patterns, and his view is based on morphological concerns here: Initials and acronyms, abbreviation, shortened compounds, Japanese innovations, compounds using English and Japanese, English loans with Japanese morphology, Japanese words with English morphology, and creative word play (Hoffer, 1990). The first pattern refers to initials and acronyms. Some of these are directly borrowed from the West, and others are made by the Japanese, e.g., Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome AIDS NEC Nippon Electric Company MBS Mainichi Broadcasting Station 5 3 The second pattern is abbreviation. This is often used in newspapers, magazines, and conversation, e.g., [risutora] restru Restructure [rihabiri] rehabili Rehabilitation form [hoomu] Platform The third pattern is called shortened compound. This is the pattern that shortens compound English noun phrases, e.g., Moth-corn Mother complex [Mazakon] Air-con [Eakon] Air conditioner [waapuro] Wor-pro Word processor The above second and third patterns are concerned with the phonetic feature of Japanese. The Japanese phoneme is called a mora. A mom is briefly explained as a combination of a consonant and vowel of English--CV. For instance, k of English alone can not be a sound in Japanese, but k+a can be a sound. Thus, all English words are phonetically reproduced in this way. Baseball is pronounced as be e su bo o ru which has six mora units. The longest mora length is considered to be eight through ten mom units ( The Japanese National Language Research Institute, 1984). Therefore, English loanwords which are longer than this will be shortened or abbreviated. The word and phrase, rehabilitation and sexual harassment are reproduced as re ha bi ri to e shi yo n, and se ku shi ya ru ha ra su me n to. Since both of these reproduced sounds have more than eight mora units, they are abbreviated and shortened. In addition, most compounds are shortened, usually to four mora units made up of two units from each word. Sexual harassment is, of course, one of them-- sexual harassment sekushiyaru harasumento sekuhara. This may be related to the fact that Japanese has many vocabulary items which consist of four mora units that are the combination of two 6 4 Chinese characters (The Japanese National Language Research Institute, 1984). In short, when the Japanese shortened long loanwords, they unconsciously think in terms of four mora units. The fourth type is newly-created English items; Hoffer (1990) called these 'Japanese innovation'. It refers to English items semantically created by the Japanese; therefore, these items do not make any sense to the native English speakers, e.g., Breakfast menus at restaurants morning service A ticket center play-guide A night baseball game nighter The first example was probably used by owners of cafes where coffee and tea is served. However, most of those in Japan have started to serve light foods, particularly in the early morning when people go to work and twelve noon when people go to get lunch. Particular menus with a reasonable price which are served in the morning are called 'morning service.' There is a joke that an American who heard this word said, 'Go to a church.' A very common morning service consists of a piece of bread, boiled egg, salad on a small dish, and a cup of coffee and cost about three dollars. The second example refers to a ticket center in English. This word was probably made from the idea that going to a theater and concert are the same as playing, and a ticket center is a place that gives us information, namely, a guide. The last example is based on the English suffix, er, , which implies a person who does something such as tennis player. From this meaning, it could be inferred that nighter means people who do something in the night time, and baseball games are often played in the night time in Japan, although it is almost impossible to guess how this word was created. The fifth pattern consists of compounds using English and Japanese. Ha brush (Toothbrush) 7 5 In this case, tooth is translated into the Japanese equivalent 'ha.' This pattern seems to be increasing in frequency. Another example is: Pizza haitatsu service -Pizza delivery service "The integration of English loanwords into the Japanese grammatical system ending in can be seen in such examples /memoru/ from mem(random) + the verbal Japanese /ru/ and /demoru/ from demo(nstration) + /ru /." The sixth pattern, English loanwords with Japanese morphology is explained by Hoffer (1990:8-9). The examples listed above are the verb related examples, but the adjective ending is also used. For instance, the English adverb, 'now,' + I which is the adjectival suffix, 'now- I,' means popular or fad. The seventh pattern refers to Japanese words with English Morphology. This is perhaps the most sophisticated pattern. Let's look at the following example: (Hoffer, 1990). unbelievable Un shinjira ble This consists of the English affixes /un/and /ble/ with the Japanese, shinjirarenai, which means unbelievable. In the above example, the part, shinjira, is taken from shinjirarenai. The rest, rarenai, is the negative suffix of adjectives. Users leave out this part, and they substitute the English affixes, in and ble with the fact that they know un is the negative suffix in English and ble is the suffix of adjective. The whole meaning is unbelievable. This pattern, however, is rarely used. Since rich knowledge of English is required to use this pattern, only students use it. The eighth pattern, 'word play,' is also rarely seen, but there are some examples here. It mostly occurs when the pronunciations of English loanwords are used with the Japanese language, e.g., a map This f 8 6 Mapple I V Osaka The first example means that This is a map. As you can infer, the Chinese characters are pronounced the same as the English be-verb, is, and the Chinese character means a place which is a famous resort city in Japan, Izu. Thus, the meaning of the whole sentence is a map for Izu. The second example is the name of one of the most popular atlases. This is simply made of map and apple. Although this word does not have any meaning; it is just a name of a road atlas, there are some possible purposes here: the name of a commercial item is very important, and it should be something new which enchants people; and the combination of map and apple sounds very natural, fancy, and phonologically new for the Japanese. The last example means I love Osaka. This pattern may have been increasing in recent years. Note that these examples are actually used as the name of commercial products. These are not used as word play; thus, I think that the word play pattern is used to give people strong impressions of products. One more pattern which is made of a combination of an English loanword and one from another European language is added, e.g., (Arakawa, 1967) Gom-hammer: Gom (Dutch) + hammer Repo-writer: Reportage (French) + writer; it means a reporter. (Arakawa, 1967) These are the main patterns for the use of loanwords, but many loanwords partake of more than two patterns (e.g. 'gas stand,' is a Japanese innovation). This compound is shortened as gasu suta from 'gas' and 'sta' of 'stand.' Thus, it is becoming difficult to categorize loanwords in one pattern. 9 7 3. DATA ANALYSIS 3.1. Method A questionnaire was given in 1993 at Osaka University of Economics and Shoin Women's College, both located in Osaka, Japan. The informants are students whose average age is 20. All informants of Osaka University of Economics are males and those of Shoin Women's College are females. Although nine questions were given, only the first two questions are used for this report. The two questions are: What kinds of English loanwords do you often use in your everyday conversation?; and what kinds of English loanwords have you often heard recently? Although there are several ways to analyze this data, differences between gender should be focused on because the informants are grouped as males and females. In addition, it is important to analyze loanwords by lexical categories. 3.2. Results Taken all together, the most frequently appearing loanwords are nouns. Only a few verbs and some adjectives were found. Most of them can be categorized in certain lexical categories such as words concerning food and drink, sports and so on. Through the categorizations loanwords concerned with food and drink are ranked as no. 1 in the data from females, and words concerned with everyday language are ranked as no. 1 in the data from males. Words in every day language refer to words which are very often use in everyday conversations and are difficult to categorize in one lexical category. Thus, for those words, the Japanese do not feel they are loanwords (e.g. paper, miss, service, speed, news, and course). A table which indicates the top five categories are shown as follows: 10