Recognition of English Loanwords (waseieigo) Among Japanese University Students

Abstract

　Loanwords are like vocabulary “freebies” when studying a new language and can aid in overall acquisition (Nation, 2003). In the case of Japanese, the katakana syllabary system has served to adapt foreign words into a phonetic notation system that everyone in the population is able to recognize and pronounce (Rebuck, 2002). These words of foreign origin, now represented in katakana, are called gairaigo, and as of 2000 the Sanseido dictionary contained over 52,000 foreign loan words entries (MacGregor, 2003). In contrast, waseieigo, also known as “made in Japan English” is a class of language composed of vocabulary that utilize the katakana syllabary/dictation system, thus appearing to look like a foreign loanword, but these words possess a meaning that is slightly or totally different from that of the language of origin (Norman, 2012). This study is an electronic adaptation of a study by Norman (2012) and looked at university student familiarity with waseieigo. Similar to the Norman study, it was found that the student awareness was around 50%.