Re: NATLANG Q?: Dutch,etc. for "Pangaea" & "Gaia, etc.

Joseph Fatula wrote:
> If this is correct, I'm rather surprised.  Has Japan decided that the only
> foreign language is English, and that all new terms must be borrowed from
> it?  Consider how new terms (including these above) are often coined from
> Latin or Greek in English, I would have expected Chinese to have continued
> to affect Japanese.  What's going on here?
Chinese compounds are occasionally created, but English has taken the
position of prestige in contemporary Japanese.  English has connotations
of modernity and "coolness" in contemporary Japanese.  A 1964 study
found that, depending on the source, as much as 10% of the vocabulary in
use was of foreign origin other than Chinese.  The ratio is certainly
higher today.  That same 1964 study found that 80.8% of the non-Chinese
foreign vocabulary was from English, French in second with 5.6%, and
German third with 3.3%.  During the Taishou period (1912-1926), English
was 51.9%, with Dutch in second place at 27.8%, Portuguese third at
14.2%.  The Dutch and the Portuguese were the major trading partners of
the Japanese before modernization.

--
"There's no such thing as 'cool'.  Everyone's just a big dork or nerd,
you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." -
overheard
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