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

Sarah Marie Parker-Allen wrote:
>
> The LA Times did a big article about this back in December (I linked to it
> from my blog, even).  There are a lot of words that have dictionary
> translations in Japanese, but young people are choosing to use English words
> instead.  It's creating confusion, as there are a lot of two-syllable type
> words that already have a close relative in Japanese.
Not to mention the fact that these are, after all, foreign words, which
are unknown to many Japanese people.  It's so bad that I read that
computers have things like "heruppu menyuu" for "Help menu", borrowing
the English rather than translating!  Well, "menyuu" is already a fairly
established loan word, but "heruppu" isn't.  I think the confusion is
more because of unfamiliarity with new words than resemblance to
already-existing words.

Quoting once again from the ever-useful "Languages of Japan":

  If these foreign words are incomprehensible to foreigners, they are
also not too well understood by the Japanese themselves  Since they are
not written with Chinese characters, their meanings cannot be easily
guessed at.  In 1973, Nippon Housou Kyoukai (Japan Broadcasting
Corporation, abbreviated as NHK) conducted a survey concerning the
comprehension of foreign words.  One hundred words such as baagenseeru
(<bargain sale), enjoi (<enjoy), and riaru (<real) were shown to the
respondents together with five possible meanings for each item, and the
respondents were asked to select the meaning that most closely
corresponds to the given item.
  The results showed a great deal of variation according to the
respondent groups.  In the case of rural housewives (in their forties to
fifties), the percentage of correct answers was 40 percent compared to
60 percent for the other three groups of respondents
...
This survey also revealed that many foreign words are understood in the
semantically shifted meanings, which have diverged from the original
meanings, sometimes to quite an extent.  For example, 47 percent of the
respondents chose the meaning "a person who has a hobby" for the word
mania (<mania); 20 percent chose "public morality" for etiketto
(<etiquette) and "sound" for boryuumu (<volume), and 22 percent chose
"bribe" for ribeeto (<rebate)
...
There is one area in which precise understanding of foreign loan words
does not seem to matter much although they are used conspicuously.  This
is in the area of advertisement and commercial messages.
...
Foreign loan words, like slang expressions, are quickly adopted and then
abandoned.  Only those that are firmly entrenched in the language can be
found in dictionaries.  The ratio of foreign words in the Genkai,
published in 1859, was only 1.4 percent.  The rate increased to 3.5
percent in the Reikai Kokugojiten published in 1956.  The 1972 version
of Shin Meikai Kokugojiten has gairaigo (foreign loans) comprising 7.8
percent of its entries.  It is predicted that foreign words would claim
at least a 10 percent share of the entries in a dictionary compiled
today.

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