Notes on Loanwords in Japanese

Language Contact and Lexical Borrowing## Language contact's impact. . This volume focuses on lexical borrowing into Japanese over the past 450 years. Borrowing varies by language. Table 1.1 summarizes Thomason’s borrowing scale, but only focuses on the lexicon. Intense or more intense borrowing is evident in Japanese. - Nouns, verbs, and adjectives are borrowed more often. - Adverbial particles and conjunction are rare (except "andooa" and/or). - Adpositions (oobaa and in from over and in), personal pronouns (mai and yuu from my and you), low numerals (wan and ii from one and yī), derivational affixes (furu and izumu from -ful and -ism), and even articles (za and ra from the and la) are borrowed. Function words are rarely borrowed in Japanese. This occurs in a strongly monolingual society with little direct contact. Ethnic homogeneity is a discredited myth; linguistic homogeneity is not. Non-indigenous speakers do not exceed 1% of the population. Borrowing occurs from Western science and philosophy (§2.3, §2.4) and the English language, which distributes such knowledge. Adaptation patterns reflect distant, orthographic contact (§3.2), exemplifying Thomason’s flaw, emphasizing the importance of understanding the written word. No comprehensive works exist, caution should be exercised due to dating and focus. Miller’s review of Loveday is fair, but scathing. Research has focused on phonology, morphophonology, and morphology (especially mora obstruent epenthesis), accent, and truncation processes. NINJAL conducts surveys as a crucial source of diachronic data. ## Vocabulary Strata in Japanese: Definitions & Divisions## Japanese exhibits lexical stratification, including native, Sino-Japanese, mimetic, and foreign strata schematicized diachronically. Figure 1.1 shows the four vocabulary strata through time Native stratum (wago or yamatokotoba): words indigenous to Japanese. - Mostly are core vocabulary that include particles ya, wa, dake. Fundamental biological activities (naku, taberu, šinu). Kinship terms (haha, musuko, mago). Body parts (atama, te, hiza). Natural phenomena (yuki, nami, cuki). However, numbers > 10 are Sino-Japanese. Mimetic stratum (giseigo or giongo): mimetic or ideophonic words. - Further divided into phonomimes, phenomimes and psychomimes (Shibatani 1990: 153-157). Phonomimes mimic sounds, phenomimes mimic external phenomena states, psychomimes mimic psychological conditions. Characterized by reduplication and phonological/syntactic constraints. Never borrowed. Can be subsumed within the native. Sino-Japanese stratum (kango): words borrowed from Chinese. - Borrows from China began with written characters in 5th century CE. Wasei no kango created in Japan (kango yakugo or shinkango) were the product of Dutch learning (rangaku) and rapid industrial growth. Reflects prestige of Chinese culture via Buddhist (kyoo, sooryo), Confucian (kookoo, senpai), political/administrative (daijin, koomu), astrological (juuniši, gogo), and legal/judicial terms (saiban, šikei). Useful analogy between borrowed information, horrible, transparent and loans like thug, kangaroo tomatoes. This is further distinguished with Chutzpah, zeitgeist, sang-froid. Loanword examples. Foreign stratum (gairaigo): residue after removing native, Sino-Japanese, and mimetic words. - Shakuyōgo (broader) or Western. NKD dictionary definition: words taken from one language into another. Muromachi period [1573]. Recent Chinese (ii, gyooza, kooryan), oorudomisu, naitaa, nehan, ajari. - Problematic in that date reflects political boundary and definition restricts borrowings