Adventures of Peach

Friday, June 30, 2006

Japanglish

I had a good opportunity to listen to a lecture by a linguist who is working for The National Institute for Japanese Language. He is an expert of various Japanese; accurate Japanese, words of foreign origin, honorific, dialect etc.
Today's point of the lecture was how medical staff should communicate with patients who don't use medical terms.
It was surely interesting.

During the lecture, I remembered that the institute suggested how to paraphrase words of foreign origin called Gairai-go.
Parhaps you've already known that we've adopted lots of words from foreign languges and use them in daily conversation.
Let me show you some examples with clues.
Can you guess what they mean?

From English
chokoreeto (is sweet)
koohii (is bitter)
basu (to take to go to somewhere)
terebi ( do you watch?)
raihu sutairu ( I'm very interested in your ..)
toraburu (what happened!?)
depaato (I went shopping)
botan (press, fasten, undo)

From Spanish or Portuguese
pan ( for breakfast)
koruku (wine bottles have...)

From German
arubaito (to earn money..)
karute ( square-shaped)
wakuchin ( to guard against infection)

We still keep adopting foreign languages and some of them, especially economic terms and IT terms , are impossible to understand without Google.

Surprisingly, the linguist didn't deny Gairai-go. He also said that Gairai-go can make sentences sound soft and easy to understand by women and young people.

That makes sense.

7 Comments:

  • I couldn't guess what any of them meant, but it was really cool and interesting to see that! Thanks for the good post!

    Somethimes, we change the original meaning...so perhaps you don't really like Japanglish..
    It's our problem.
    ~Peach

    By Blogger Erin, at June 30, 2006 7:09 AM  

  • That's interesting! I know the English Gairai-go but don't know they also came from Spain!
    Blog is also Gairai-go, isn't it!?

    Yeah, please remember that many Portuguese and Spanish people came to Japan in Edo period.
    They brought us lots of things including "pans". ^_^
    ~Peach

    By Blogger erika, at June 30, 2006 12:16 PM  

  • The words are:

    Chocolate
    Coffee
    Bus
    TV
    ?--> life style (My clue was bad..sorry.)
    Terrible--> trouble
    Department Store
    Button

    Am I correct? We had to learn many Gairai-go in my Japanese class.

    Too good!
    You can see them written in カタカナ(Katakana) when you come to Japan. Maybe you've already learned that from your teacher.
    ~Peach

    By Blogger Matt, at June 30, 2006 2:50 PM  

  • Wow Cool!
    Well, I speak German, and I know 2 of the words you wrote (adopted from German). English words, I know the most words you wrote. It is really interesting!!

    Arbeit--sorry, we changed the original meaning-->a part-time job
    Karte--sorry, we changed the original meaning-->medical/clinical record
    ????-->Vakzin(it's not German?)---> vaccine

    You know most of Gairai-go from English? Cool! ^_^
    There actually are too many Gairai-languages here.
    It's kinda flood, I'd rather say disaster....Japanese's been broken...
    ~Peach

    By Blogger Fabian, at June 30, 2006 4:58 PM  

  • rabenstrange: Life style ;)

    About spanish I get pan but no koruku.... corcho????

    さすが、Bernat!
    "corcho(Spanish)=cork(English)" is right! Así es!!!
    Is it a peace of cake?
    ~Peach

    By Blogger スロ / Bernat, at June 30, 2006 10:14 PM  

  • very intersting!

    Sankyuu!

    It's also a "Japanese English" which means "thank you".
    ~Peach

    By Blogger mickey the wicked, at July 01, 2006 1:11 AM  

  • Very interesting. I haven't known "Pan" come from Spanish.

    Pan in Spanish.
    Pon in Portugal. <---I sometimes read PAN is from the Portiguese language. I don't know which is right, but when you go to Spain, you can find "PANS & company". It's cheap and delicouls!
    ~Peach

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at July 01, 2006 7:09 PM  

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