Contemporary Loanwords in hiragana: An Analysis of Typical Traits and Contexts

ABSTRACT

Loanwords (gairaigo), words ‘borrowed’ from other languages, are an integral part of the Japanese language, and are estimated to account for around 10% of the modern Japanese lexicon. While loanwords are conventionally written with the katakana script, some contemporary examples appear in the hiragana script, which is usually reserved for words of Japanese origin. A corpus of loanwords in hiragana was assembled and analysed in order to describe typical characteristics of these words, such as the source language and method of elongating vowels, as well as the genres of text in which such words appear. The motivation for the use of hiragana for loanwords is also discussed, and expands on selected well-documented functions of loanwords. For example, loanwords can be used to fill lexical gaps, or give a ‘cool’ or ‘modern’ image to a referent. These functions are discussed specifically in relation to loanwords in hiragana. The results of this study extend prior research on loanwords in Japanese, and reinforce the often-cited flexibility and adaptability of the Japanese writing system.

Acknowledgments

This research was conducted as part of the author’s doctoral degree at the School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne, Australia. The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers of this paper for their helpful comments and feedback. All remaining errors are the author’s own.

Notes

¹ Objections to the term ‘gairaigo’ and/or ‘loanword’ are noted, and include the inaccuracy of the metaphor of ‘loaning’, and the presence of ‘made-in-Japan English’ (wasei-eigo), which is not a straightforward case of the adoption of foreign terminology. Despite these issues, the word ‘gairaigo’, and its translation as ‘loanword’ in English will be used, as these terms are widely used and understood.

² This word has since been superseded by the loanword カメラ or kamera.

³ Although only a superficial measure of current use, a google search for the word kicchin results in 1,850 million results, while daidokoro produces only 316 million.

⁴ For more information, see Sherry & Camargo (1987), Smith & Schmidt (1996), Kataoka (1997), Iwahara, Hatta, & Maehara (2003), Inoue (2005), Miyake (2007), Akizuki (2005), and Robertson (2015).

⁵ This is, of course, despite the fact that the hiragana characters were based on kanji characters. See Ishikawa (2007), for more on the development of this script.

⁶ It is noted that the extra vowel character is often ‘う/u’ when an ‘お/o’ sound is lengthened. For a detailed explanation see Irwin, Loanwords in Japanese.

⁷ This image is particularly interesting since another loanword プリン (purin or pudding) appears in katakana in the sign on the right.

⁸ This word was present in various forms in the corpus, such asこーひー, and こおひい. Such variation seems to have a historical precedent; Hida and Sato (2002) note these and other variants in English-Japanese dictionaries dating from 1887.

⁹ Koritto appears to be an onomatopoeic expression suggesting the sound ‘crunch’ or ‘snap’.

¹⁰ For example, see Loveday (1996); Rebuck (2002); and Irwin (2011).

¹¹ See Kataoka (1987); Sherry & Camargo (1987); Smith & Schmidt (1996); Iwahara, Hatta, & Maehara (2003); Inoue (2005); Miyake (2007); Akizuki (2005); and Robertson (2015).

¹² To ascertain this, data on the ratios of English and non-English loanwords in katakana would also be required, and this point is merely raised as a potential hypothesis.