Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-gvh9x Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-24T12:14:17.242Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Errors in the use of English in the Japanese linguistic landscape

Understanding how erroneous uses of English in Japan are often more than just careless mistakes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2015

Keith Barrs
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Foreign words which have been borrowed into the Japanese language, especially in the last few centuries, are commonly labelled as 外来語, gairaigo, meaning words (語, go) coming in (来, rai) from outside (外, gai). This umbrella term encompasses lexical items from numerous foreign languages, including Russian, French, Spanish, Italian, Korean, German, and English. As they undergo the borrowing process into the Japanese linguistic system, the words are likely to undergo modification, particularly in terms of their phonology, orthography, semantics, and syntax. The overwhelming majority of gairaigo have their roots in the English language; estimates put their number at around 10% of the Japanese lexicon (Daulton, 2008; Stanlaw, 2004). They include borrowings in the daily Japanese vocabulary (ニュース, nyūsu, news); ones used primarily in specialist fields, (コーパス, kōpasu, corpus), and others recorded in dictionaries but that play very little part in actual language usage (インディビデュアル, indibijyuaru, individual).

Type
Research Article
Information
English Today , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , December 2015 , pp. 30 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barrs, K. 2011. ‘Unlocking the encoded English vocabulary in the Japanese language.’ English Today, 27(3), 15–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daulton, F. E. 2008. Japan's Built-in Lexicon of English-based Loanwords. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Dougill, J. 2008. ‘Japan and English as an alien language.’ English Today, 24(1), 18–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyde, B. 2002. ‘Japan's emblematic English.’ English Today, 18(1), 3–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Irwin, M. 2011. Loanwords in Japanese. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kay, G. 1995. ‘English loanwords in Japanese.’ World Englishes, 14(1), 67–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Preston, D. R., & Yamagata, A. 2004. ‘Katakana representation of English loanwords: Mora conservation and variable learner strategies.’ Journal of Sociolinguistics, 8(3), 359–379.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seargeant, P. 2009. The Idea of English in Japan: Ideology and the Evolution of a Global Language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Stanlaw, J. 2004. Japanese English: Language and culture contact. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, I. 2001. ‘Japanese speakers.’ In Swan, M. & Smith, B. (eds.), Learner English: A teacher's guide to interference and other problems, 2nd edn., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.296–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar