Contact Linguistics. Chap

Exercise: Find out at least ten words that have been borrowed into English or Spanish from Native American languages, and ten that have been borrowed in the opposite direction. Compare your findings with those of your classmates, and try to determine what semantic fields are represented in the borrowings.

Another type of “distant” contact leading to lexical borrowing can be found in the spread of global avenues of communication such as radio, television and the internet. These have facilitated the spread of vocabulary from (American) English in particular to many other languages. In some cases, that influence has been strong and pervasive, even though the contact is supposedly “distant.” A case in point is Japanese.

2.1. English influence on the Japanese lexicon.

Japanese contact with English dates back to the opening up of Japan to Western influence from the mid 19^th century on. The defeat of China in the Opium war with Britain (1840-1842) impressed on the Japanese the need to learn about Western concepts, and particularly their scientific and military know-how. There was a significant influx of English loans, especially in the late 19^th to early 20^th century. As Ishiwata (1986:457) notes, these borrowings were motivated by the need for modernization in areas such as science, technology and higher learning.

But the greatest impetus to borrowing from English came from growing exposure to it via radio, cinema, newspapers and other forms of mass media, which spread popular American culture among the Japanese, especially the more well-to-do youth. The first phase of this influence occurred from the 1910’s to about 1930, ending with the growth of strong anti-Western feeling which culminated in the war of 1941-1945. The post-war occupation of Japan set the stage for even greater exposure to English, which became an avenue to social advancement and education. In this period, many English-derived words spread quickly into Japanese. The result is that such words now make up some 7.29% of the modern Japanese lexicon, second only to Chinese, from which as much as 48% of the Japanese lexicon is derived (Loveday 1996:41). In addition to domains such as science and technology, English loans abound in areas that reflect the influence of western fashion, cosmetics, sport, music and the like. Table 2 illustrates:


Table 2: Some English loans in Japanese, by domain.


Food: Sport


sarada < salad batto < bat
keeki < cake geemu setto < game and set
sofuto (aisu) kariimu < soft ice cream bodiibiru(dingu) < bodybuilding.


Dress/Fashion Music/Leisure.


supaiku shuuzu < spiked shoes songu < song
ooba (cooto) < overcoat paati < party
sangurasu < sun glasses terebi(jon) < television


Examples from Ishiwata (1986).