Words index  Vivian Cook

English words in Japanese

Though many English words have been borrowed into Japanese, most cannot be recognised even when they are written in the Japanese alphabetic script (romaji). The reason is the differences between Japanese and English pronunciation. Japanese syllables only have a single consonant and never end in a consonant apart from ‘n’, ‘ta’, ‘do’ etc never ‘tat’, ‘tra’ etc. So English words borrowed into Japanese tend to be padded out with extra vowels to separate the consonants and to end in a vowel, for example ‘supana’ (spanner). Japanese also makes no distinction between ‘r’ and ‘l’, yielding ‘teberu’ (table). Finally Japanese goes in for shortening long words, ‘sekuhara’ (sexual harassment)

Here are some common Japanese words with their English equivalent.

Now see if you can guess what English words these Japanese words come from. Warning: they may not necessarily have the same meaning. Answers below

Answers: 1.elevator, 2.hotel, 3.soccer, 4.melon, 5. beer, 6.cola, 7.Christmas, 8. hotdog, 9. goodbye, 10. cat food