Defining the concept of loanword in Japanese: results from a survey of 860 respondents

The Japanese term gairaigo is frequently used as a gloss for loanword. However, formal Japanese definitions 0f gairaigo generally exclude words borrowed from Chinese from the scope of this term. Upon inspection of the usage of the main Japanese terms for the three main word categories wago (native Japanese words), kango (words of Chinese origin) and gairaigo (loanwords), it was found that words were classified not by actual origin, but by apparent origin. Consequently, both the kango and gairaigo portions of the Japanese vocabulary contain both loanwords and words coined in Japan from borrowed elements. In surveys of the responses of the Japanese public to gairaigo, the definition of this term has not generally been ascertained even though the influx of gairaigo into everyday life has been one of the main issues polled in most surveys on public attitudes towards current language use in Japan. The present paper reports the results obtained when a question concerning the definition of gairaigo was included in a survey of attitudes to gairaigo. It was found that over 30% of respondents did not concur with the formal definition of this term. These respondents included kango in the definition, thereby adopting a more literal interpretation of gairaigo than that found in the academic literature.