So.. I haven’t been to Japan yet, only just changed my computer’s OS and a few web services’ UI to Japanese, and found that katakana is used everywhere, it’s almost like still in English but just written using different characters. Things like メモ、チャット、メール、グループ、トレイ，they have to have their own words, right? Do they not use them?
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So many English words are just words stripped from other languages you just don’t realize it. It’s not uncommon for a language to have a large amount of loan words.
A few factors are coming into play here.
1. Yes, a lot of loanwords exist in Japanese, especially with IT terms, OS terms, etc., since a lot of computer interfaces originated in the West (Microsoft, Apple, etc.) You (generally) wouldn’t describe a “group” of people gathered on the street as グループ (you’d use 集団, etc.) or or a chat you had with someone at the office as チャット (you’d use 喋る/おしゃべりする). The “mail” as in postal mail is 郵便, not メール, and so on and so forth. So “native Japanese” synonyms do exist. But the loanwords are used are used for apps, software, etc., because the use of these words in a computer/IT context often originated or became popular in the West.
2. The loanwords that you’re seeing are probably sticking out to you even more since your eyes will be drawn to them if you’re not yet as comfortable reading kanji/kana, etc.
3. The words have *origins* in English — and other languages, of course — but they’re still *Japanese words* in the sense that they have been borrowed into and now exist the Japanese language. They’re pronounced different from the English (you almost certainly wouldn’t recognize them as “English” if you heard them pronounced by a native speaker in a full-speed Japanese conversation, and you can expect Japanese people not to understand you if you pronounce them like English). They’re even sometimes coined into “native” verbs like ググる (“to Google [something]” and メモる (“to jot something down”) that conjugate just like regular Japanese verbs.
4. Like the other response says, English also has many words borrowed from ancient languages like Latin and Greek, modern languages like French and Spanish (and heck, to a lesser extent, even Japanese). Often you won’t recognize these as loanwords because you’re just thinking in terms of your native language, but the English loanwords in Japanese are sticking out to you because you know English better than Japanese at this point.
*edited to add*
And perhaps most importantly…
Watch out, because not everything in katakana that looks like “English” is actually (recognizable) English. Many of them are 和製英語 (”made-in-Japan English”) where English words are given new meanings, abbreviated in creative ways, etc. etc. F
The common word for “PC” or “computer” in Japanese is パソコン, an abbreviation of パーソナルコンピューター. “Smartphone” is スマホ (an abbreviation of スマートフォン). A laptop is ノートパソコン. An office worker is サラリーマン, a high-rise apartment is マンション, and a convenience store is コンビニ. Then you have the non-English borrowings, which include very common words like アルバイト (part-time job, from the German *arbeit* and colloquially further shortened to バイト), パン (bread, from the Portguese *pão*), and so on and so forth.
**TL;DR: Loanwords in Japanese are a lot more complex than they may appear at first glance, and it’s not as simple as “Japanese is full of English words”.**
From [Tofugu](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/katakanization/):
> A study from the 1990s showed that over 35% of all vocabulary printed in 70 Japanese magazines were foreign loanwords, most of them being of English origin. A 2010 book about *wasei eigo* also indicated that Japanese people use 3,000 – 5,000 loanwords in daily conversations, and 94% of them are of English origin. Of course, these studies are from years ago, so we probably use even more katakana words in Japanese today.
See also: [外来語](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gairaigo)
You should see the amount of loan words the English language has! It’s not a matter of a language having their “own words”. Loan words are incorporated and part of the fabric of a language. Plus, how great is that? You’ll almost immediately get an understanding of what the word means by reading it and noun-verb phrases are awesome! Ex (ノートする)
A lot of newer words(especially computer terminology) are borrowed. I don’t like it though, such a nice pretty sounding language now has all these goofy sounding loan words. At least they’re easy to memorize. But no, the vast majority of things are spoken in Japanese, not loan words.
Sometimes “foreign words” feels kitschy, but often they ultimately travel the globe with products.
Sometimes it’s possibly an sign of convenience like your メモ example instead of 覚書 [おぼえがき (oboegaki)] or “葉書 or 端書 [はがき (hagaki)]
But since memo itself is an abbreviation for memorandum it’s perhaps an fitting example
Digging in to the history of words used in English often reveals roots from other civilisations and cultures that they been in contact with.
tl;dr – you have NO IDEA how many borrowed words Japanese uses and will increasingly use in the future! it’s like at the speed they borrow new words, there’s no time to translate and saturate them all into daily vocabulary of the whole country.
disclaimer: I don’t hate Japan or the Japanese language. I’ve spent decades learning about them and my whole career/livelihood is based around them. I am annoyed by specific stupid things that exist in Japan like I’m annoyed by stupid stuff in my native country, usa.
for English speakers, a big confusing factor is the amount of words borrowed from non-English languages, German, French, etc, especially because the katakana rendering sounds even less like the original language to our ears compared to English borrowing from those same languages. One especially aggravating example is the duplication of “bar”:
バー = a quiet establishment for drinking alcohol, not a night club nor sports bar. these exist in Japan but are called something else (the latter possibly スポーツバー might be popular for watching international rugby matches and American football, for example… yeah already weird)
バル = a drinking place for drinking alcohol and eating meat, possibly other Spanish style tapas. of course other European countries’ cuisine would be available cuz Europe is all the same thing right?
As you’ve just experienced and another commenter said, they are common in tech terminology, but that’s not completely accurate. katakana terms are common in tech, fashion, baking, pseudo psychology and all other layperson forms of social science discussion.
background:
English has long been a required subject in Japan schools.
Japanese companies have been present in the usa since 1970s I think. like USA companies abroad, they send some executives to oversee the branch, but Japan also continuously sends middle and lower managers, tech experts, even executives’ personal admins to foreign branches on rotation.
aside from university students, it’s even routine for chefs, bakers, dancers, visual artists, classical musicians, etc etc to study abroad.
lately Japan has been in the news for dropping in the rankings of qty of internationally published scientific research but Japanese academics used to be named on a large number of papers regularly.
This is all a recipe for bringing back a lot of knowledge and vocabulary to Japan.
It’s common for languages to borrow words. Only like 20% of English words are of Anglo-Saxon origin. Plus, a lot of the Japanese words you are thinking of could be loanwords from Chinese or Sanskrit, the amount of pure yamatokotoba is a relatively small share
For example, as for the words you listed there, well, I wasn’t alive before WWII, so I can only imagine this, but the メモ could have been just “紙の切れ端/かみのきれはし(cut-off pieces of paper).
There might have been no メモ-like thing at that time…
There might have been 帳面/ちょうめん (notebook), though.
チャット is obviously an internet technical term, not the usual “おしゃべり,” so I think Japanese people use the word in katakana as a new word.
The same goes for メール(e-mails) and トレイ(trays).
The tray that you serve tea with is still called “お盆/おぼん”, but using お盆 for e-mail trays is weird because an email inbox is not the same as お盆.
Also even for some actual お盆, some Japanese people use トレイ when the trays don’t look like Japanese style.
As for another word like ドア, there were only ふすま and 障子(しょうじ) in Japan, so western style doors are definitely ドア for Japanese people lol
Some people still call them 扉/とびら though.
There’s so many it has a term, its called Wasei-Eigo.
Actually, there’s so many that there’s a [schoolyard game of trying to speak without using English words](https://youtu.be/_Fe4QN3uy3U).