Just for reference, I’m for the most part, a self-learner between N3 and N2. In order to get into the language as much as possible, I decided to switch the language of all my electronic devices to Japanese. The one I used the most, like most people, is my smartphone.
I was a bit intimidated at first, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought vocabulary wise, largely because the amount of loan words is HUGE, at least in iOS.
This made my doubt my whole approach to the Japanese language, I’ve spent so much time learning vocabulary and kanjis, and I don’t even know if I should even say 音楽 or ミュージック, 本 or ブック lol.
For those of you who have been studying for much longer, and/or currently live in Japan, what are you thoughts on this? Is this something you have to learn on a word to word basis? (Like which one is more common or correct, and in which setting), or is this just an apple (or any other tech manufacturer) thing and people don’t really use as many loan words in “real life”?
I know some Japanese learners meme about this either on this sub o other places on the internet, but I’m really curious about when to use loan words, even if there’s a perfectly normal and correct Japanese word for the same concept or thing.
Thanks!
13 comments
I’m barely scratching the surface of N3 but for what I’ve read, I feel like loan words are for mainly foreign stuff/foreign brands/digital stuff/modern stuff
For example, you’d say 音楽 when listening to music, but ミュージック when listening to music on Spotify.
Same with 本 being a physical copy of a book and ブック a digital, although there is also e-hon which is much more used. Thinking about it, I really haven’t seen much use of ブック but then again, I still have to learn a lot.
I also assume Japanese would try to use more lean words when communicating with foreigners because they assume it’s easier for us to grasp those words.
For all rhe pushback it’s kinda getting at the moment, this is where immersion shines.
The answer is yes, everything is used, they convey slightly different tones, and you basically have to learn by seeing the situations they’re used in.
Though ブーク is something entirely new to me outside of like, titles and names of things. Never seen anyone use it to refer to an actual book.
You’re going to encounter different words in different context. If you’re reading advanced litterature on music, I highly doubt that you will come across ミュージック
You know… I honestly never thought about it like this.
You kind of learn what’s more common the more you immerse. I’ve seen several of these things alternate one or the other, and I just never think about it.
I’ve definitely seen オプション in place of 設定… or visa versa… it’s just… whatever.
Certainly if one is heavily used over the other, the more used one just kind of settles in my brain and I use that.
Sometimes I’m more relieved for a loan word than concerned about whether or not I know the Japanese alternative.
Especially when I found that my own word usage was strange when I spoke/typed. So like, for me, I’m CONSTANTLY surprised at the words used that I wouldn’t necessarily have used.
Everything for me is still a mystery grab bag of words. So I just use whatever I see anymore, rather than what I learned on my own.
If that makes sense.
I encountered this when I set iOS to Japanese when I first started studying Japanese many years ago. For those iOS apps, it’s because that’s Apple’s name for the app. The app is literally called “Music”, so in Japanese it’s ミュージック – in the same way that Microsoft Word is called ワード, not 言葉 or something. ミュージック is in my experience never used instead of 音楽 in ordinary usage; same with ブック.
I think it’s because those are the app names themselves. When we say that we are reading something on “Books,” we aren’t referring to reading on a stack of books, but rather we are talking about a platform that is named that way. Same for Music. It’s probably different for an app like Translate (I use Apple) just because the name refers to the function of the app rather than just what the app has. The app Books has books, Music has music… but a translator does not have translations, it does translation.
I recently did an engineering training for our Japan office and was flipping through their manual. Almost every single machine or engineering term was just katakana. Made it easy to train them in English since alot of terms were similar.
Yeah. I’ve not switched my phone, but the loanwords get me… I’m still pre-n5 and not in a position of authority to answer your questions, but every now and then I get super confused too.
Recently I needed to use ‘nostalgic’, so I looked it up and found ‘懐かしい’ ‘なつかしい’ ‘natsukashii’ which seemed to fit the best, and was told, *”Yeah, maybe, or you can just use ノスタルジック.”* Why bother having words if you’re just going to use ‘nosutarujikku’ anyway?
It’s not just us that don’t get it either. An old man sued NHK for using too many. He lost. [Link] (https://japantoday.com/category/national/court-rules-against-man-who-sued-nhk-for-using-too-many-loan-words)
Relevant paragraphs:
> The Nagoya District Court has ruled against a 72-year-old man who filed a damages suit against public broadcaster, claiming that its overuse of foreign loan words rendered many of its programs unintelligible, thus causing him emotional stress.
> Takahashi said NHK was relying too heavily on words borrowed from English, instead of their traditional Japanese counterparts. He gave as examples words such as “risuku” (risk), “korabo” (collaboration) and “toraburu” (trouble).
I’ve read elsewhere that loanwords like ‘risuku’ are used to downplay the risk when talking about it in more casual settings. I don’t know how true that is though, honestly.
The language has changed a lot over the past 20 years. Nowadays 喫茶店 has a very specific connotation of old school japanese coffee shop and everything else is カフェー。Business Japanese has the most of these loan words and they’re used differently to English so don’t try to map words across.
Yeah those katakana words are regularly used in this context. It’s something that was made in English and directly translated to japanese. I’ve found in these situations are very common especially in foreign created content. If you said ミュージック or ブック in a conversation people would probably assume you don’t know the japanese words, it would sound kinda weird
Yeah, that’s Japanese:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW4AiEqKGto
The IT world in general is incredibly reliant on katakana
The worst offender is SNS, which for the uninitiated is what Japan calls Social Media. My guess is some influencer heard of SMS and just assumed the rest, like a Daigo joke, but it stuck. Uniquely tragic
Think about the English word *anime*. It basically means “Japanese cartoon”. It comes from the Japanese word アニメ, which just means “cartoon” – i.e. in Japanese all the cartoons are アニメ, including *The Simpsons* and *Frozen*. In turn, アニメ came from the English word *animation* (or possibly from the French word animé… who really knows). Which itself comes from the Latin word *animare*, but let us set that aside.
If you’re a proficient English speaker, you know all the words *anime*, *cartoon*, *animation*, *video*, etc., and you know which of those words to use in which context. It’s the same in Japanese. You have to learn multiple words for the same concept with different connotations, and learn which one to use in which context.