other than the english words themselves, the ones used in basically every nation i refer to more isolated cases, for example “sayonara” in spanish means goodbye and in kind of in japanese too, all i could find on google is that it means like “goodbye forever” but i found nothing about the origin of the word
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There are a lot of similarities between many asian cultures and languages, especially Korea and China. I’m no expert but I believe some kanji are very similar to those found in other Asians languages. They also have an alphabet specifically for spelling romanised words, whilst it’s not borrowing words it’s interesting kinda related.
They literally have an entire “alphabet” for foreign words. Their primary writing system (“another “alphabet”) comes from China (“Chinese characters”).
Sayonara in Spanish means “goodbye” because Spanish borrowed it *from* Japanese. Not the other way around.
The origin of the word Sayonara comes from “Sayounaraba” which basically means “In that case…” or “Well then…”.
It was used in conjunction with things like “Mata ashita” (see you tomorrow) or “Gokigenyou” (please take care) so it’s like “Sayounaraba, gokigenyou” (Well then, please take care).
Then somewhere in the Edo period the “Sayonara” established itself as a stand-alone parting phrase.
Just to clarify the term ‘Borrowing’ in languages is when a language doesn’t have a word for a specific thing so they absorb a foreign word that already does the job.
English has LOADS of these, partly from an early love of ‘Romance’ languages like French (pork, habit, beef, cafe), and partly due to colonialism (just from India: jungle, bandana, khaki, bungalow, Blighty).
Japanese also borrows a Hella lot.
Zubon (trousers), arigatou (thank you), pan (bread) are all from Portuguese.
Takushii (taxi) Basu (bus) paasukon (personal computer), waishatsu (white shirt- meaning a western style smart shirt) are all from English.
Many of these borrowed words, when written in Japanese, are written in katakana so are easy to spot.
I’m Spanish. We don’t say sayonara here. All I’ve heard it has been in Terminator 2 or other old movies and not much more than that. All languages borrow words from others since language is evolving and we live in a global world
Sometimes Japanese use both English and Japanese word for wordplay. Example: name 大河 (たいが) and タイガー (tiger). I’ve seen this one in Toradora! and Fate/Stay Night. I find it funny every time.
And you’ll find “borrowed” words from languages you might not expect with meaning you might not expect. One example that catches my eye: アルバイト means part-time job and comes from German word Arbeit (work).
Once you get used to how Japanese pronounce“ borrowed” words, it’s much easier to spot them. I would never guessed that サンダーバード means thunderbird.
That said I love the sounds of “borrowed” words.
Yes, they borrow words. Don’t have my Japanese keyboard on my new phone but the Japanese “arubaito” (part time job) comes from the German “arbeit” (work) or “arbeiten” (to work).
The majority of Japanese vocabulary (by total number of words, not by frequency) is Chinese loanwords, to the point that they’re not even considered foreign anymore, so yes, they do borrow, nowadays mostly from English
Takushi (spelling may not be correct) for TAXI!
There are lots of loan words from multiple languages. My favourite is “pan” for bread. I guess they use the French because パン is easier than ブレッド (bureddo). Hottodoggu is a good one too.
Is this satire? The spanish Sayonara part threw me off
I would say significant amount of nouns came form other languages, mostly Chinese.
More than half of the Japanese lexicon is of Chinese origin.
If those don’t “count,” yeah, for instance, medical terms like カルテ are often German, パン is a Portguese-origin word, etc.