toshiharu33 comments

Posted in: Too much katakana contributing to Japan's malaise See in context

For us English speakers, we're SUPPOSED to differentiate foreign words by putting them in italics so that it it obvious that the word is not from the English language

Just to clarify, italics are only used for words that are not a part of English but not for words that have already been adopted into English. For example if I were to suddenly say "This phenomena of wasei eigo is changing Japanese..." etc. Words like karaoke and karate (and taco and resume for that matter) have been adopted and are fully incorporated into English and there is no need to italicize them.

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Posted in: Too much katakana contributing to Japan's malaise See in context

Myself, a self-proclaimed gaijin fan of kanji (one of oooh sooo few...), I do admit that 1) kanji and native Japanese words perhaps sound more elegant, and 2) I do find katakana English (和製英語) annoying. BUT this is a phenomenon that affects all languages, right? Japan is not the only country that finds it abhorrent to have so much English infiltrating their 'pure' language (take France for example - a country who says 'le weekend' but doesn't officially allow the term 'e-mail'). Second, this is a phenomenon that you can't really control. Such reforms documented during WWII failed to hold and probably wouldn't last if done today either. Moreover, it's 和製ed 英語 - which in and of itself is linguistically fascinating, right? The Japanese are doing exactly what they did to kanji 1500 years ago to English now: taking foreign words and making them their own.

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