Enough With the Kompyuta! Let's Makuru!
New York Times
August 26, 2000
THINK TANK

Although English is becoming the dominant  language around the world, few outside Japan may be  aware of how extensively it has transformed Japanese. Herbert Passin, professor emeritus of sociology at Columbia University,  reported on this upheaval in "Japonica: How to  Read the Japanese Language if You Know the English Source Code," which appeared in the  spring-summer issue of Correspondence: An International Review of Culture and Society. Excerpts follow.

 From the Asuka period (A.D. 552-645) through  the late Heian (end of the 12th century), the  Chinese language completely penetrated Japanese.

 The same thing, I would suggest, is happening  today with English. English is in the process of  being completely absorbed, and its entire vocabulary is becoming available for use in Japanese.  Today when new words are made up they will  come from English (or to a lesser extent, from  some European language),  no longer from Chinese.

 It is hard to imagine modern Japan without  English. Right now, I am sitting at my desuku  (desk), or teburu (table), with the rampu (lamp)  on, holding my kompyuta  (computer), taipingu  (typing), making occasional notes with a boru-pen (ball-pen).

 I sip some kohi (coffee) from a gurasu (glass).  When I need a break, I move to the sofua (sofa),  lean against the kusshon (cushion) and read the  nyusu (news) about the latest sekuhara (sexual  harassment) incident. I then turn to the puroguramu (program) on the karar-terebi (color television) and watch a homudorama (home drama).

 There is no "l" sound in Japanese so that all  foreign words with "l" are pronounced with an  "r." "Flight" becomes "fright," or more exactly,  "furaito." A further pronunciation problem is that Japanese syllables all end in vowel sounds, except  when there is an "n." "Book" becomes "bukku,"  "size" becomes "saizu," "pencil" becomes "penshiru." When the syllabic ending is "n," "pen"  remains "pen," "downtown" is "dauntaun," a  "can of beer" becomes "kan-biru."

 Today, because of the enormous increase in the  velocity of communications and the diffusion of  literacy, the assimilation of foreign languages  requires mere decades, or even years, rather than  centuries. There are several fairly distinguishable stages in this process. In the first, foreign words are taken in whole and used passively.

 But once these words are domesticated, they immediately open up a new stage in which they take on a life of their own. They are used in ways  that may not be instantly understandable to the  speakers of the original language. "Mansion," for  example (pronounced "manshon" in Japanese),  which usually suggests to modern Western minds  a large, residential estate, like that of the titled aristocracy or the wealthy, is commonly used in  Japan to mean a pricey apartment.

 The next step is essential for Japanese: abbreviation.

 There are now thousands of abbreviated English words used by Japanese that without explanation usually cannot be understood by English speakers. A few examples: "register" becomes  "reji";  "negative," "nega";  "handicap,"  "hande";  "reportage," "rupo"; "permanent wave," "pama."

 Hundreds, or even thousands, of foreign compounds are taken over with virtually no change  (except pronunciation): "golf bag" ("gorufu-baggu"), "software" ("sofutouea") and so on.  Many, however, even though close to the original  meaning, are abbreviated, and once this happens  they begin to look a little different and usually  cannot be understood by English speakers. A classic example -- by now, hardly used -- is the  post-World War I "moga" (from "modan gaaru,"  "modern girl") [or 25 years ago "dampa" from "dansu paatei," "dance party"].

 At the next stage, foreign words in full or  abbreviated form are combined with Japanese  words (including completely assimilated Chinese  words as well) to make new compounds. An  archetypal example is the by now rather old  "tonkatsu" ("pork cutlet") made up of the Chinese "ton" ("pork"), and "katsu," the abbreviation of "cutlet."

 Just as Japanese used to create new words out  of Chinese freely and autonomously, so now it is  beginning to create a homemade English. When I  gave up smoking at my doctor's orders, this was a "dokutu-sutoppu" ("doctor-stop"), an example of  what I would consider brilliant new English.

 Other examples abound. I like "bea," from  "besu-appu," "base-up," that is, a rise in the base  wage from which other calculations for the total wage are made.

 The penultimate stage comes when people are  no longer aware that the word is not native.  "Pan" ("bread") is from 16th- or 17th-century  Portuguese. But it is so deeply rooted in Japanese that we now find the baffling compound "bureddo-pan" ("bread-pan").

 In the final stage, the foreign word is completely assimilated to the grammatical form of Japanese. Normally, foreign words (including Chinese) are formed into verbs by adding "suru"  ("to do") into adjectives by adding "na" and into  adverbs by adding "ni."

 A good example is the old standby "saboru."  Originally, it came from the abbreviated "sabotage," "sabo," but it has become completely Japanified by adding the Japanese verb form "ru" and then taken on a somewhat divergent  meaning: to play truant, to evade doing something one does not want to do, not to do one's part.

 More recent examples of this creative innovation are: "makuru" (to eat at McDonald's), "saburu" (to eat while riding a subway car -- from"sabuuei," "subway").

 All languages take in foreign loan words. In Japan, Chinese was the first major penetration, and its impact was overwhelming. Fourteen hundred years later, something similar seems to be happening with English. In the centuries in between, Korean, Dutch and Portuguese made significant, though lesser, contributions.

 English itself developed in a similar way.  Shaped from Germanic, then invaded by Norman  French, its intellectual, legal, scientific and religious vocabularies were also deeply influenced by Latin.

 Today  English continues to take in new language from Anglo-Indian, Caribbean, South-African, Irish, Scottish, Australian, Yiddish and countless others.

 Japanese, therefore, is not unique in this process. However we may come to rate the relative  penetrability of languages -- and it is debatable,  say, whether English, Japanese, Turkish or Uzbek  is more open to foreign linguistic influence -- the  process of English-absorption that is going on  before our eyes in Japan today is awesomely  inventive.

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