LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 21:7 July 2021
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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An Analysis of English Loan Word Inflow into Japanese Language

Ajay R. Tengse, Ph.D. (Research Supervisor)
Mahender K. Gakkula, M.A., Ph.D. Research Scholar

Abstract

Japanese language has been evolving with various important changes due to many historical reasons since 1600s. One of the important reasons for which the Japanese language underwent major changes is due to a strong influence of the West during 1900s. Both the policy related to English language education and use, and media’s dependence on English words have accelerated the borrowing of English words into Japanese language during the past few decades. It is intriguing to researchers of this field and therefore makes it very important to understand and analyze the reasons to why English loan words have been massively entering into Japanese language to a point where every tenth word used in Japan today is an English loan word. This paper highlights with examples as to why English loan words flow into the Japanese language along with the explanations as to what effect they cause, by investigating the reasons why such adaptation has become unavoidable overtime.

Keywords: English loan words, linguistic adaptation, katakana English

Introduction

Japanese language is unique in a way that it has a long history of borrowing words from other languages, especially English. Due to the economic, political and cultural influence of the UK and the US on Japan, many loan words have been absorbed and adapted from English into Japanese. These loanwords are used on a daily basis by phonologically modifying them such that it is easier for a Japanese layman to naturally use them. As a result, they become more “intelligible” for Japanese. Languages are not rigid structures belonging to one finite culture but are dynamic and adaptable across time and space (Blommaert, 2010). The adaptations however require conforming to the target language rules of orthography and pronunciation to begin with. The modifications of English loan words adapted into Japanese are both phonological and morphological, in order to provide a smooth assimilation of these words into Japanese language.

Japanese is written in three different scripts: kanji, the ideographic characters adopted from Chinese, and the two syllabic scripts: hiragana and katakana. The Roman alphabet, known as ‘romaji’ can be considered a fourth script which makes use of English letters and also optionally makes use of phonetic symbols.

The ‘hira’ in ‘hiragana’ means ‘ordinary’, or ‘common’, as this script was considered a writing system for general use or non-government documents (Shibatani, 1990; Akizuki 2005). Due to its non-official status, hiragana was enthusiastically taken up by literary-minded women, who were discouraged from learning the more complicated kanji characters which were associated with official documents and other sources of male power (Shibatani, 1990). As a result, hiragana has been used for casual writings and personal texts which is referred to as ‘women’s hand’ (Ishikawa, 2007). Katakana was used in Buddhist Monasteries for helping the Monks in understanding the pronunciation of Chinese characters, as a form of annotation (Akizuki, 2005). The word ‘kata’ means ‘part’ and ‘kana’ means a written form. Due to the dependence on the katakana and hiragana, they have become widely popular. Katakana serves as the main vehicle in orthographical adaptation for loan words to take a place in Japanese language, wherein English loan words, with few exceptions, are always represented using katakana. Also, the pronunciation of loan words undergoes changes according to the syllabification in Japanese language. Japanese follows a mora timed phonology so consonant clusters usually get reduced by adding necessary vowels to be adjusted to get mora-timed pronunciation.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.


Dr. Ajay R. Tengse
Head, Professor of English
P.G. Department, Yeswanth College, Nanded
ajayrtengse@gmail.com


Mahender Kumar Gakkula, Ph.D. Scholar (Corresponding Author)
Swami Ramanand Teerth Marathwada University (SRTMU), Nanded
Former Japan Government Exchange Programme (JET)
Former English Instructor at Ehime University, Japan
mahenderkumarg@gmail.com
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