I’m often surprised at the number of words in example sentences that are clearly loan words and consequently rendered in katakana rather than hiragana. There have been several times when I have meant to post a query along the lines of “surely there must have been a native Japanese word for this?” but I usually don’t get around to it, and then I can’t think of any examples. These aren’t the most extreme, but things like ノート and アパート spring to mind: did the Japanese not have notebooks or buildings containing multiple dwellings in the past? However, the word that has finally prompted me to post this query is FILM (or MOVIE depending on where you live). I’m doing a bit of extra vocab with Kitsun’s JLPT N5 deck and it includes フィルム yet there is clearly a “proper” Japanese word for this, ie 映画. Which of these would actually be most likely to be used in Japan/by a Japanese person?
There’s nothing uniquely Japanese about loan words. Does it bother you when an English speaker says poltergeist or karaoke or coffee?
Kenkyusha’s entries for 映画 seem to refer to movies as a finished product you watch, whereas フィルム is also used to describe film (the storage medium) itself. So my uneducated guess is that the latter is more common in industry/technical/scholarly/fan discussions. (it also has entries for film as in a thin covering over a window).
I take your point, and English does indeed have a huge number of loan words. However, if you leave aside those arising from, for example, Norman times when a lot of French words were imported, some of which replaced existing Anglo-Saxon words and some of which continue to be used alongside A-S words, many loan words are for things like new technologies, or are just handy words for something that become popular. Thus many languages call the thing I’m writing this post on a computer, while words like Zeitgeist become trendy and are often a single word that would replace a more cumbersome phrase. I can’t think of any other word that means coffee, so I presume English imported it along with the beverage, nor can I think of a single other word that would replace poltergeist. So, maybe words like ハンバーガー were imported with the product, and ラジオ is a technology word, but what about スポーツ - surely sports must have existed in Japan before the loan word arrived?
Here’s one I’ve just come across in today’s lessons: ニーズに合わせる meaning to adapt to the needs of. Surely Japanese people have, like everyone else, had needs for longer than a loan word was available to describe this fact?
When I google スポーツ I get photos of people participating mostly in modern western sports versus, say, sumo or kendo. I suspect that has something to do with it.
I also think you’re sort of ignoring the fact that people like to sound fashionable and cool, and loan words are one way to do that.
seanblue: thanks! Enjoyed that. I was surprised by the person who said he thought Japanese was now 20-30% loan words. Pity I’m so old really - if I had time to wait long enough, I wouldn’t have to learn Japanese at all
I think of it similar to how many Latin phrases are in English:
id est (i.e.)
exempli gratia (e.g.)
post meridiem (pm)
ante meridiem (am)
antebellum
et cetera (etc)
de facto
per diem
per se
quid pro quo
status quo
alter ego
ergo
ad lib
…I’ve always thought people who used a bunch of these were fancy but some of them are just so common that I can forget they’re originally Latin (like alter ego)
Avoiding loan words while speaking Japanese will most likely sound like you are trying to act very high class, which will come off very funny in most cases.
I think this one is an example of where a loanword is taken initially as a bit of specialist jargon, and has a narrower meaning than the word does in its original language. This one is marketing/business jargon. (You’ll notice it got borrowed in the plural, because that’s how English language marketing jargon typically uses it.)
Incidentally, the Meiji era approach to jargon was usually to coin a new kanji based word to represent the foreign concept; a lot of words you probably don’t think of as particularly non Japanese are in this category. (For example, 自動詞 and 他動詞 are Meiji era coinages to translate Western books on grammar that used “intransitive” and “transitive”.)
There’s actually a really fun card game here in Japan called カタカナーシ
The idea is to describe the words on the card (which word is designated by the number on the top deck card ) without using any katakana.
This example would be trying to describe ゾンビ without using katakana. It’s very fun to play!
Language is always changing, slang etc. Being fashionable and also high tech/ on the cutting edge requires a lot of international influences in this day and age. As computers and technology allows us to connect with many countries around the world, other languages adapt to it and usually decide on one word to use.
It’s like calling the fridge the icebox. Sure people would know what you’re talking about, but no one uses it anymore so you’d catch people off guard and confuse the younger ones. Sure refrigerator doesn’t necessarily come from a loan word, but you can also think about it like, before people would say “raw fish on rice” instead of “sushi” but now most people know sushi so why not use that? Or like “japanimation/japanese comics” but now people understand “anime/manga” so we just use that.
Also there are Japanese words for ノート and アパート but they are outdated or their meaning has changed to accommodate the new katakana use. (for example 手帳 is now used more so for bank books, medicine books and diaries also often if you see the 帳 kanji it means something akin to book/notebook but! It doesn’t mean notebook like how it means to us in English, nor does it mean the same as ノート anymore. and there is a Japanese word for apartment 集合住宅 but it’s less common than 団地 which means this specific apartment style here Danchi - Wikipedia which doesn’t include all アパート nor マンション
Sorry for rambling, language is just so fun and interesting and I love to see how it changes and Katakana is particularly fascinating
There are tons of loan words in the English language much more recent than Norman times that refer to things that already existed in Western culture such as entree, entourage, faux pas, repertoire, delicatessen, rucksack, costume, parasol, jeans, graffiti, silo, guerilla, bizarre, icon, and many more.
But why any particular Japanese loan word exists is a complex topic. You might want start with a blog post by the same company that makes WaniKani Japanese: The Borrower Language - it’s well written and explains a lot of the craziness.
Business Japanese has an overabundance of loanwords, because of that particular culture, but I think even Japanese people find it silly most of the time.
I think ニーズ might come under the umbrella of 意識高い系, a personality trying to project a larger image of self-importance and entrepreneurship than there is substance to back it up.
That includes excessive use of English loanwords, since English is (was 15 years ago?) a way to distinguish yourself as worldly-minded.
And of course it lines up with sales where you need to grab attention, project confidence and such.
A lot of katakana words are really convenient though. コンビニ is much handier than “convenience store”, or the even longer expression in my native language.
pm215: A lot of katakana words are really convenient though. コンビニ is much handier than “convenience store” I have also noticed that words likeスマホ are much brisker than the original word that’s been borrowed - I like the way Japanese just sort of tails off once you’ve done enough to make the meaning obvious.
All this is actually good for my katakana recognition anyway - I’ve got pretty good at hiragana by now but still have to think more about katakana.
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fancy 
