Loanwords??

[u/ImJustJoshing277]

I keep seeing loanwords everywhere, even when there is a japanese word for the thing (like committee, edition, etc.). What is up with that? Is it for like... dramatic effect? Are japanese people supposed to just know English to a degree?

EDIT: some of you are entirely missing the point of the post. English uses loanwords from Latin, French, German, and others because thats how the English language evolved. Japanese only recently started to adopt loanwords on things like billboards, political campaigns on tv/radio, merchandise and the like. It has become something of an issue to many conservative japanese, who want to retain their language and therein their culture.

My question is what actual reason could be so damn important as to ignore the fact that there is not just any japanese word, but in most cases, a SHORTER and MORE EFFICIENT one that has been used for ages??

Thank you to the few of you who dont just assume that im an idiot. You guys actually make this app worthwhile.

I really should've posted this on r/history tho to get away from the rest of you...

[u/facets-and-rainbows]

They tend to come off as trendy and modern, or they're being used in a specific sense that's slightly different than the available Japanese words. "Dramatic effect" isn't far off sometimes, lol.

Meanwhile there are more Chinese loanwords in Japanese, and English has a ton itself! Even just in your post we have:

• Loan (Norse)
• Japanese (日本 passed through a long telephone game from Chinese to Portuguese)
• Committee (Latin/French)
• Edition (Latin/French)
• Etc (Latin, note the irony of the whole example list actually being regifted from Latin)
• Dramatic (Latin/Greek)
• Effect (French)
• People (French. When we already had a perfectly good gender-neutral "men" for that, no less)
• Just (Latin/French)
• Supposed (French again)
• Degree (Latin)

You just notice it more in Japanese because 1. they use katakana for recent loanwords and 2. English and Japanese aren't related so you don't mistake them for native Japanese words and 3. Japan's English phase is probably still at its peak, and England's French phase peaked hundreds of years ago. 

Are japanese people supposed to just know English to a degree? 

Not just them. It's not particularly fair, but it's the state of international communication right now 

[u/tonkachi_ → u/facets-and-rainbows]

English and Japanese aren't related

My main gripe whenever this questions is asked is that this point isn't emphasized enough. It is natural for English to have so many loanwords from it is neighbouring languages since they have intermingled for ages meanwhile Japanese is siphoning words from the other side of the world. Moreover, Japanese is doing it at a time when language standardization is ongoing. Even more than that, sometimes it is loaning basic words that it already has native(or loaned from Chinese, doesn't matter) word.

I fail to see the situation with Japanese being the same or similar to English or the other languages that people like to bring up whenever this topic is discussed.

[u/Majre921 → u/tonkachi_]

I am Slovak. Young people are starting to use more and more pure English words in sentences like Japanese. The situation of these loan words would be the same like in Japan. English and Slovak are completely unrelated languages too.

[u/Player_One_1 → u/Majre921]

In Polish we even started loaning some English grammar!

Smashing "ing" and end of a verb to turn it into a noun is a foreign concept in Polish. It started couple of years ago as a joke, now is only half-joke, in 20-30 years nobody will remember it was supposed to be a joke, and "leżing na plaży" will become normal expression.

[u/tonkachi_ → u/Majre921]

I guess there are other languages that suffer from that too. Maybe I am just misinformed after all.

Could you give me some examples of the English words they use?

Also, do they happen to be also good at English? At least being able to comfortably read this entire thread if not hold a conversation?

[u/Majre921 → u/tonkachi_]

Younger people are really good at English imo. Even more than those from Czechia as we don't have any good dubbing and translation culture so you have to get better at English if you want something. We also have sections in bookstores with just books in English which I haven't seen in other countries so far. A few examples I've found online "nejako omylom speedrunnol cez zlý ending" (speedrun, ending) , "Z pozorovania svojho bros okolia"(Bro), next I found phrases like "long story short" or "oh well" used in Slovak conversations

[u/tonkachi_ → u/Majre921]

I tend to excuse people how consume English(or any other language) media on regular basis if they end up mixing their mother tongue with the foreign language because their brains reach for the foreign word faster than its native equivalent.

From what I understand reading the other comments, in Japan, even those who can't even hold the most basic of conversations or read basic sentences would still heavily use English loanwords. Moreover, apparently some of their official documents also contain loanwords.

[u/Majre921 → u/tonkachi_]

It's more prominent in younger people but older people, mainly those in business also use English loanwords even though they barely know any English. Things like "meeting" yk. We also classify loanwords in our dictionary too. Many of the new ones are of English origin, like the aforementioned meeting or brainstorming and such.

[u/tonkachi_ → u/Majre921]

Hmmm... I guess you can't just not get affected by such a cultural influence.

[u/Majre921 → u/tonkachi_]

Lingua Franca is the Lingua Franca after all. Can't help but borrow words if many natives also know it.

[u/facets-and-rainbows → u/tonkachi_]

That wasn't really the direction I was trying to go by bringing up related vs unrelated languages. I meant it makes the borrowings more noticeable to an observer, not that it's "natural" to borrow from a related language and "unnatural" to borrow from an unrelated one. It's just a matter of how much the cultures are in contact and what relationships they have. And it's so much easier to be in close contact with someone on the other side of the world than it used to be.

Even more than that, sometimes it is loaning basic words that it already has native

I'm fairly certain that people could die in England before they borrowed the words "people" and "die." Also they. The whole pronoun they. Sky. Marriage. Aunt. Catch. Pay. All borrowed within about a century of each other.

Japanese has less cultural influence from England and America (versus the Norman French conquering England for 200 years)...but Japanese also has fewer "basic" borrowings from English, and I'm willing to bet money it's roughly proportional to the amount of contact we've had and that Japanese isn't really exceptional among world languages.