Gairaigo-Remodelling Language to Fit Japanese
Margaret Pine Otake · 2008
The incorporation of English words into the Japanese language has been called the “bastardization”of English. Japanese people have been heard to say that they were ashamed that they could not use the English word correctly in Japanese. There are also published works that claim that the Japanese language is being ruined by the inclusion of too many foreign words. The purpose of this paper will be to show the role of foreign loan words in Japanese: how usage and pronunciation have changed and are changing, and what purpose such words play in the language. Such loan words are called GAIRAIGO in Japanese- literally, coming-from-abroad words. From the view of the native speaker of English, the use of a word from English in a different context, with a different nuance, or with a radically different pronunciation than the speaker is used to, can be a threat to the cultural identity of the speaker. However, when one considers that English has borrowed and is borrowing thousands of words from other languages, the Japanese process of borrowing can only be commended.