A Historical Study of Japanese Loan Words from the Meiji Era

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The major contributions to the study of Japanese gairaigo (words borrowed from languages other than Chinese, and normally written using katakana) are Minoru Umegaki's Nihon gairaigo no kenkyu (A Study of Japanese Gairaigo ; 1963) and Sobei Arakawa's Kadokawa gairaigo jiten dainiban (Kadokawa's Gairaigo Dictionary, second edition ; 1977). Subsequently, a number of other gairaigo dictionareis have appeared, as well as a few other works such as the Agency for Cultural Affairs' Gairaigo jittai chosa shiryo 1-3 (Materials for Investigating the Actual Use of Gairaigo, 1-3 ; 1989-90), but there has been no diachronic survey using actual examples. The present study attmpts to clarify the use of gairaigo since Meiji through actual word-by-word examples. It contains the first database for gairaigo in Japan, and should develop into a dictionary of Japanese gairaigo based on actual examples.The research results are as follows :1. The texts used for examplesWe investigated original editions, collec … More ted works and paperback editions. For Mori Ogai's Gan (The Wild Geese) and Shusaku Endo's Umi to Dokuyaku (The Sea and Poison) we compared magazine publication, the first book edition, author's collected works editions, collected modern literature editions as well as paperback editions by Iwanami, Shincho, Kodansha and Kadokawa. We found differences between all these texts and the first book edition due to author's revisions, editorial revisions or misprints. Because of this it is necessary to be clear about the basic texts used in vocabulary studies and collecting examples.2. The construction of the databaseIn order to clarify the history of each word we built a chronologically arranged database of actual examples. So far the database consists of approximately 40,000 example sentences begining with h, f, b, m, y, r and w. We hope to expand it to the remainder of the alphabet in the future.3. The selection of problematic gairaigoFrom the database and English-Japanese dictionaries we selected gairaigo which have changed in transcription, changed in meaning, undergone abbreviation, or been created in Japan, and compiled a list of gairaigo created in Japan.4. The historical study of gairaigoWe did this for some of the examples collected. This report includes saibogu (cyborg) and aidentiti (identity). Less