Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Loanword and Japanese-English (etc.) in Japan

New Post for my "Etymology" page. (please enter from the side-bar link.)
Related with the first post for the link, "Loanwords in Japan related with sweets♪"

PS>  One of my sweetest friend kindly asked me to post here as well♫ 
         I thought Etymology should be for only my memory sake, as the topic might not so attractive,haha.


(posted in etymology page)
In Japanese, wa have Japanese-English and Loanword (etc.); which makes it hard for foreigners to learn English besides basic three characters "hiragana, katakana and kanji". They are written in Katakana as they are originally from foreign language for us. Sometimes it is really hard to get the definition or which category to put. I will make a list to get my head straight.

Loanword (or maybe, katakana-Eigo : katakana-English)
*Ones we use in original meaning
      table(テーブル・te-buru), bus(バス・basu), milk(ミルク・miruku), door(ドア・doa), tent
      (テント・tennto)
*Ones we use in different meaning
       (Should be carefully used to the foreigner)   J.> meaning in Japanease
      mansion(J.>apartmant,condominium), shortcut(J.>short hair), naive(J.>
       sensitive), cunning(J.>cheating), claim(J.>complain), bike(J.>motorcycle)

Japanese-English (coinage, derivative can be in this category)
       night game (ナイター.nighter)  custom-made(オーダーメイ.order-made)  
       mechanical pencile(シャープペンシル. sharp pencil)
       breakfast special(モーニングサービス,morning-service)  autographサイン.sign)

1 comment:

  1. Dearest Orchid,

    Funny but there are lots of Dutch words too in the Japanese language... One day, when I have more time I will look into that and share either in a blog or with you. Loanwords and any word, can be very tricky at times as it can have different meanings!

    Lots of love,

    Mariette

    ReplyDelete