6 docs tagged with "loanwords"

How new loanwords are coined in Japanese: the pipeline from foreign concept to katakana to a settled word, the language bodies that steer it, and why some fail.

Loanwords that replaced native Japanese words rarely replace them fully. See how ミルク, スプーン, and アパート split from their native synonyms by register.

Pre-English loanwords in Japanese: where パン, タバコ, ガラス, and アルバイト come from, traced by source language from Portuguese and Dutch to German and beyond.

Shortened loanwords in Japanese follow a four-mora rule. Learn why パソコン, リモコン, and アポ get clipped and how to predict the short form yourself.

Wasei-eigo are Japanese-coined pseudo-English words like サラリーマン and ホットケーキ. Learn what they are, how they form, and the real English for each.

Gairaigo are Japanese loanwords written in katakana. Learn what 外来語 means, the Portuguese, Dutch, and English layers, and how much vocabulary they cover.