'Stress' most recognized loanword in Japan

Friday 25th July, 06:30 AM JST

TOKYO —

‘‘Stress’’ is the most recognized and frequently used loanword in Japan, a survey on the Japanese language by the Cultural Affairs Agency showed Thursday. In the nationwide survey conducted in March, to which around 2,000 people responded, the agency asked respondents whether they understood the meaning of 60 loanwords, if they had seen or heard the words, and how often they had used them.

In the survey, 98.5% of the respondents said they had either seen or heard the word ‘‘stress,’’ prompting an agency official to comment that it was a ‘‘reflection of the current state of Japanese society, in which many people feel stressed.’’ Among other loanwords in the survey, ‘‘recycle’’ and ‘‘volunteer’’ were recognized by more than 90% of respondents.

The recognition rate for ‘‘website’’ jumped to 67.2% from 38.1%. Meanwhile, 14.5% of respondents were positive about the use of imported words, of whom two-thirds said it was impossible to express certain things without loanwords. However, 39.8% were not in favor of loanwords, with half of them saying the Japanese language would be damaged as a result, the survey showed.

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Latest 15 of 31 Total Comments Show All

Bovinus at 12:21 PM JST - 25th July

The problem is that these words just replace Japanese words so Japanese students of English assume that they have the same meaning in English as they do in Japanese.

This is severely limiting the ability of Japanese people to learn English as they already have deep false assumptions which are hard to get rid of.

Take the word 'claim' for example. In Japanese it means to sue; completely different to English. An English teacher would need to be fluent in Japanese to understand why a Japanese student is making this mistake.

Another problem is that the magic of 'suru' doesn't translate into English. We have word families but the Japanese can change thousands of nouns into verbs by adding 'suru'.

Loan words = stunted English learning ability.
Balefire at 12:34 PM JST - 25th July

The first sentence of the article is incorrect.

What the survey actually shows is that among the 60 loan word terms in the survey--whatever they may have been other than "stress", "website", "recycle", and "volunteer"--"stress" was the one most recognized by the survey respondents, and, presumably, reported by them as being the term they most used.

Of course that doesn't mean that "stress" is more recognizable to Japanese than, say, "coffee" or "pan" or other loan words, regardless of their national origin. It only means that it's the most recognizable among the terms provided in the survey.

Incidentally, it's interesting that both Mark Twain and Benjamin Disraeli are credited with the quote about statistics. The two men are pretty far apart in many other ways even though they seem to share that opinion.
kimigano at 01:40 PM JST - 25th July

what? More than "bye bye!"?
chardk1 at 01:43 PM JST - 25th July

I agree with Bovinus. The Japanese taking on a lot of loan words from English is not in and of itself worthy of criticism, but to use said words in a way that isn't particularly consistent with its conventional use in English or invent obscure terms when said society is also trying to learn English, strikes me as odd and counterproductive.

"Stress" is a prime example -- to Japanese, this is a catchall term for all manner of emotional and mental maladies but to a native English speaker, it just means stress. So to read the news where truly abhorrent deeds are all attributed to "stress" makes the Japanese seem emotionally fragile if not actively prone to psychopathic behavior, not "stressed." In fairness, many Japanese journalists have recently been very critical, especially after the recent killings in Akihabara and Hachioji, of this blanket tendency to blame "stress." They also recognize it has become totally meaningless from overuse.

There's nothing wrong with Japanese coming up with alternate meanings for gairaigo or portmanteauing anything with more than a couple of syllables. The problem occurs if Japanese think this Janglish has any currency outside Japan, and the truth is that an awful lot of them do (I have met any number of Japanese who are surprised "pasocon" is not commonly understood by English speakers).
outofmydepth at 01:49 PM JST - 25th July

nigelboy - duh - kanji IS CHINESE CHARACTERS. the article was taking about damaging the japanese language with loan words. even the japanese dont know if some words are japanese or not. it is not a logical arguement, as in chinese characters are not japanese (originally) thus did chinese characters damage the japanese language when they were borrowed. anyway, language is always changing. it is used by living beings. i say that the japanese (and the french, by the way) should just get over it. if they want dead languages, there are a few, otherwise let the language flow and dont "sutoressu outo."
hikikomori08 at 02:04 PM JST - 25th July

what? More than "bye bye!"?

I doubt it! But that's not on the list of "most recognized and frequently used loanwords in Japan"

If sekuhara was on the list, that'd probably be Nambaa Wan.
USNinJapan2 at 02:26 PM JST - 25th July

Bovinus

'Kuremu' (claim) in Japanese means complaint or greivance. Not once have I seen/heard it used to mean 'sue' in a court of law.
USNinJapan2 at 02:28 PM JST - 25th July

I don't think anything beats 'mama' and 'papa'...
hikikomori08 at 02:37 PM JST - 25th July

I concur with USNinJa. I used to take part in cultural exchange with a bird who worked at Seibu - she sometimes dealt with kureemu, such as customer dissatisfaction and returns of merchandidse and so forth, which seems pretty much like a claim to me. I however had no kureemu with my product, and found it very agreeable.
kinniku at 10:13 PM JST - 25th July

I got stress just reading the headline!
Pukey2 at 10:25 PM JST - 25th July

Bungleer:

Well it's not only the Japanese that like loanwords, considering that half of the "English" vocabulary despite it originally being a Germanic language comes from French...

Notice I said 'the urge to use SO MANY loanwords'. Of course loanwords are part of all languages, but the rate at which they're incorporated into Japanese, willy-nilly might I add, is ridiculous. You even have whole dictionaries of katakana loanwords, most of which I doubt the older generation would be familiar with. And unlike Britain, Japan was never invaded by the Normans, Anglo-Saxons or the Vikings. The only invasion, albeit culturally speaking, were from the Chinese, hence the number of Sino-Japanese words.
Wottock_Hunt at 06:55 AM JST - 26th July

In the survey, 98.5% of the respondents said they had either seen or heard the word ‘‘stress,’’ prompting an agency official to comment that it was a ‘‘reflection of the current state of Japanese society, in which many people feel stressed.’’

Another towering insight from those hard-working bureaucrats. Makes you proud to be a taxpayer.
Wottock_Hunt at 07:00 AM JST - 26th July

Have any other readers ever seen so many people stressed about so little? Life is stressful. That's it. Mickey and Minnie won't kiss it better.

Grow up.
RepublicofTexas at 12:34 PM JST - 26th July

And unlike Britain, Japan was never invaded by the Normans, Anglo-Saxons or the Vikings.

English also has many words of Arabic origin, as well as other words that are from peoples that did not conquer Britain. Also, many English words entered into the Japanese language during the American post-war occupation.

As for the survey I think they are referring to words that relatively recently entered the Japanese language and are not everyday words like pan, kohi, mama, etc.
xpompey8 at 01:56 AM JST - 27th July

Japanese should be proud of their words used in foreign countries. For example:

I'm thirsting for some rice wine (sake) to go with my raw fish (sushi). Boy look at those extreme high waves (tsunami) caused by that green dinosaur (Godzilla).