Abstract

Cannon (1987) reports that Japanese is the second most productive source of new loanwords to English. According to him, 80 of 1,029 loanwords on the vocabulary list are derived from Japanese. This paper attempts to research what Japanese words have entered into the English language from a historical perspective. The main source is Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th edition), which is reputed to be America's best-selling dictionary. The findings show that a total of 125 words are listed as headwords in the dictionary. In order to investigate the degree of the vocabulary's assimilation into English-speaking regions, the author prepares a questionnaire to 84 local people in Auckland, New Zealand, and tries to find what words are familiar to them in their daily life. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (4th edition), which is edited based on the Longman Corpus, is used for comparison. This research illustrates that the impact that Japan has made on English-speaking countries covers all aspects of life though it is still limited. Finally, some suggestions are made for further investigation.