The History of Loan Words in Japanese and Their Effect on the Japanese Language
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Hugvísindasvið The history of loan words in Japanese and their effect on the Japanese language B.A. thesis Benedikt Gauti Þórdísarson February 2016 University of Iceland School of Humanities Japanese Language and Culture The history of loan words in Japanese and their effect on the Japanese language B.A. thesis Benedikt Gauti Þórdísarson Kt.: 041291‐2069 Instructor: Gunnella Þorgeirsdóttir February 2016 Abstract Throughout history, Japan has been a very isolated country. Periodically Japan has opened relations with other countries where both language and culture were heavily influenced. From Chinese influence since the 5th century until European influence a thousand years later, currently the biggest linguistic influence on Japanese is American English. Loan words from these influences can be found in all facets of Japanese life. In this essay I will examine the effect of loan words on the Japanese language. How is the language changing and are loan words assisting or hindering the evolution of the Japanese language? How does katakana affect the assimilation of loan words into Japanese? Are loan words a gain or a loss for the language as a whole? Does Japan have to take better care of its language and if so, how? It is certain that loan words have had an immense effect on the Japanese language and while some can be perceived as negative, the existence of loan words and language contact has been a catalyst for easier comprehension of the Japanese language and pushed it to evolve. On the transcription and translation of Japanese words and names In this thesis, Japanese will be romanised using a modified Hepburn system. An exception to this are long vowels in Western loan words, transcribed with a hyphen (‐) akin to their realisation in katakana, e.g. su‐pa‐ or kaba‐. Translations are the authors unless otherwise specified. Table of Contents Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 1 Brief history of the Japanese language ............................................................................... 3 2 Loan words ........................................................................................................................ 7 2.1 What is a loan word? ...................................................................................................... 7 2.2 Introduction to terminology ............................................................................................ 7 3 Loan words in Japanese ..................................................................................................... 9 3.1 The hurdles of Japanese phonology ................................................................................ 9 3.2 History of loan words in Japan ...................................................................................... 10 3.3 The function of loan words in Japanese ....................................................................... 16 3.4 Adaption of loan words in Japanese ............................................................................. 19 3.5 True and “false” loan words.......................................................................................... 23 4 The effect of loan words .................................................................................................. 26 4.1 The effect on the Japanese language ........................................................................... 26 4.2 The effect on foreign language studies ........................................................................ 28 5 The future of loan words in Japanese ............................................................................... 30 5.1 Loan words already used in Japanese .......................................................................... 30 5.2 New loan words from here on ....................................................................................... 31 6 Conclusions ..................................................................................................................... 33 References .......................................................................................................................... 35 Appendices ......................................................................................................................... 38 Appendix I. Table of hiragana and katakana syllabaries ..................................................... 39 Appendix II. List of Japanese words in this thesis ................................................................. 40 Introduction Whether in spoken or written contemporary Japanese, it is inevitable to encounter loan words. This is the result of a process which started centuries ago and continues to this day. The path of loan words into the Japanese language is especially interesting as throughout history, Japan has been extremely isolated. Therefore, Japan’s international relations have been very limited. Despite this, Japanese is a language with a long history of borrowing and the language has taken jumps as it gained access to new influences. From Chinese influence since the 5th century to European influence a thousand years later, currently the biggest linguistic influence is American English. It is a characteristic of nearly every Western loan word that it is written in a different script from the native Japanese or the Chinese loan words, called katakana. Katakana is an angular script easily distinguished from the rounded script used for native Japanese text. Katakana makes it possible to easily transcribe foreign words into Japanese and in practice removes any barrier of entry for loan words. However, their angular design makes them stand out and be instantly recognised whether on signs or in text. Rebuck (2002) quotes Heitani (1993) that Japanese is a language that “allows everything in, but in fact gets by without anything entering”1. The angular lines of katakana physically separate loan words from those written in native script, protecting the language from them. Loan words have become more and more prominent in the language, now used for many everyday items and concepts. In many cases Japanese equivalent are either non‐existent or poorly understood, but sometimes loan words have simply replaced their Japanese counterpart, often alongside a modernised version of the idea. While they can be found everywhere in Japanese society, their non‐native status is apparent by the difference in script and sound that they have. The author has lost count of the times when an effort to recall a word in Japanese resulted in a dictionary lookup giving no equivalent to a straight loan. The prominence of loan words in the everyday environment of Japan and the apparent complacency towards their existence is what prompted this thesis. 1 Literal quote in Japanese: 「なんでもいれられるけど、本当はなんにも⼊れずにすむのです」. Translation by Rebuck (2002). 1 In this thesis I will explore the evolution of the Japanese language through loan words: what their function in the Japanese language is and what effects they have had. How the language is evolving and whether loan words are assisting or hindering that development. How does katakana affect the assimilation of loan words into Japanese? Are loan words a gain or loss for the language as a whole? Also, if the language is to survive, whether Japan needs to take better care of its language and if so, how? To answer this I will first study the history of the Japanese language. Then I will delve deeper into loan words; their history in the language and what functions they serve. Then I will examine their effect on the Japanese language before finally contemplating their future in the Japanese language. 2 1 Brief history of the Japanese language Before discussing loan words, we must first think about the language itself. Contemporary Japanese is a melting pot of vocabulary not only of Japanese origin, but also Chinese, and more recently English and other European languages. Japan’s long isolation as an island nation means it is difficult for linguists to get viable proof of the origins of the Japanese language (Scherling, 2015, p. 22). Compared to most European languages, where language contact was nearly unavoidable because of the ease of migration across the continent, the isolation of Japan meant that cooperation, not only linguistic but also in all scientific and social progress as well, was extremely limited. It was not until the 5th century A.D. that Chinese scholars began to travel to Japan, bringing with them extensive knowledge of agriculture, metalworking as well as Buddhism, but perhaps the most influential was the Chinese writing system of kanji (漢字). After the Chinese characters were standardised in the 3rd century A.D., until their simplification in the 20th century, they remained mostly unchanged. In the same period, they were adopted for use not only in Japanese, but also in Korean, and used to represent both Chinese and native words alike. Before kanji, Japanese does not seem to have had a writing system of its own. It posed a challenge, however, as Japanese and Chinese are linguistically different, and differ in word order and the use of grammatical morphemes. Until the late 6th century, writing text with kanji meant translating Japanese into Chinese, with word order and morphemes ignored in written language. By the Nara period (710‐794), Japan had become diglossic, with Chinese used mainly by scholars and Buddhist monks as well as in administration and law. At the same