The Interaction between English Vocabularies and Japanese Vocabularies

安然

Tracing back to the history of the English loanwords， which are called as garaigo（外来語） in Japanese， they were firstly appeared in 1859， since the Meiji Restoration was being carried on. The effect of English was from both Britain and America. During the Meiji Restoration time， the Japanese government advocated to associate with people from western countries for trade and business and intended to Westernize Japan completely. Although some traditional Japanese strongly opposed to this so-called “modernization”， the English words were inevitably assimilated in Japanese， and become a part of Japanese indigenes words in the future. However， at that time， the loanwords， or garaigo hadnt been formed as a system in the Japanese society and people only used them to express some daily necessities which were come from the West and they had seldom used before， such as ハンカチ（handkerchief），シャツ （shirt）. With the time going through， Japan became increasingly mighty； the loanwords from English were changed with the trend of time.

According to a survey， 80% of loanwords in Japanese are English， covering almost every aspect and Japanese is the language which involving the largest number of loanwords. In Japan， loanwords are inevitable outcome in the communication of politics， culture， economy， science and technology.

In Japanese， the loanwords are the vocabularies whose stems were from foreign languages. Strictly speaking， they are a kind of deformation of western languages， especially from the Western Germanic branch， whether in the spelling or in the pronunciation. As Japanese belongs to the Uralic language family， whose grammatical features are much different from Indo-European classification which English belongs to， the loanwords come from western languages deeply influence the system of Japanese vocabularies. Of course， Japanese vocabularies also cause a profound impact on English vocabularies.

In principle， English loanwords in Japanese are marked by katakana（片仮名）， which is a form that change English pronunciation into Japanese pronunciation system. This is the basic way to mark loanwords in Japanese. Generally speaking， Japanese used Rome words to indicate the pronunciation of the loanwords. Rome word is to Japanese what phonetic symbol is to English. As far as I concerned， Japanese loanwords can be classified as three types， they are standard type， sound-changed type and English-Japanese blending type.

The standard type is the most simple and purest type， in which the pronunciation of the Japanese word and the katakana can be corresponded in English exactly. For example：

タバコ， which is written in katakana， is pronounced as [ta/ba/ko]. Tabako is the Rome words of タバコ and if we translate タバコ into English， it means tobacco.

ピアノ， is pronounced as [pi/a/no] whose corresponding English word is piano.

テスト，is pronounced and written as [te/su/to] in Rome words and its corresponding English word is test.

Because one katakana only refers to one Rome word， and only has one pronunciation. So the standard type of Japanese loanwords is very similar with English vocabularies.

The sound-changed type of Japanese loanwords is quite alike English words in Rome words but has extremely different in the pronunciations. Some Japanese loanwords in sound-changed type have the same stems of English words but， because Japanese cannot pronounce some English phonetic symbols， they changed the English pronunciations into Japanese phonetic system. For example：

ローマ， is pronounced as [lo/ma] in Japanese and written as Roma in Rome words. But the stem of this word is the English word Roman. For in Japanese phonetic system， there is no /r/. Although some Rome words are written as /r/， all of them are pronounced as /l/. In Japanese， there is no distance between /r/ and /l/.

ホテル， is pronounced as [ho/te/lu/] in Japanese and written as hoteru in Rome words. The corresponding and original English word is hotel. The last letter of hotel is L， which is not uttered out when we read it. However， in Japanese loanword， it has to be uttered out with a sound of /lu/. Because English vocabularies have the construction as CVC， which means the last letter or syllable of a word can be consonant. But the construction of the Japanese vocabulary is CVCV， which means a consonant letter must be followed by a vowel letter， the last letter or syllable of a word must be a vowel. It has much close connection with the Japanese vocabulary system in which to insert vowel letters in to consonant letter and two consonant letters will never be stuck together.

The types of standard and sound-changed loanwords are just transformed by the principle of pronunciation in Japanese and they are copies of original English words.

The English-Japanese blending type， which means the part of morphemes is the copy of English words， but the other part of morphemes is Japanese inherent words or Chinese characters. For example：

マヤ語， マヤcan be written in Rome words as [ma/ya]， which from English word. Maya， the form part is English transliteration， the latter part is Chinese character語， which means language.

Not only Japanese has English loanwords， but also English has Japanese loanwords. The world is developing quickly by communicating which language exchange； Japanese words are admitted to English loanwords rapidly. For the English loanwords in Japanese， we can divide them into several categories：

Japanese traditional sports： judo， jujitsu， sumo， karate， aikido...

Japanese traditional culture： geisha， samurai， shogun， hara-kiri， kamikaze，kabuki...

Japanese foods ：sushi， sashimi...

Japanese original entertainments： pachinko， karaoke...

...

Despite the fact that English and Japanese belong to the different language branches， they have imitated connection. Nowadays， loanwords which hiding the native culture in a different language can express the meaning more exact and clear. With the development of international communication， loanwords in both English and Japanese not only enlarge the circle of native culture， but also show an exotic expression that enriches the language vocabulary system.

References：

[1]宋佳.The Effects of English on the Loanwords in Japanese试论英语对日语外来语的影响.2012.

[2]支顺福.世界语言博览“A Kaleidoscopic View of the Worlds Languages”[M].上海：上海外语教育出版社.2008.