Katakana-go (foreign words) in an Internationalized and Aging Society : From the Point of View of Linguistic Ecology

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To investigate the actual condition of 'Yakusho Katakana-go' (foreign words created and used in the government offices) in Japanese, two kinds of research were conducted during the last two years. One was to make a list of prefectures which are tackling the current flood of katakana-go and to make a database of 1,000 words in terms of the way of transcription, that is (1) in katakana or (2) in katakana with an explanation or (3)not in katakana. The other is to conduct a questionnaire survey as to the attitude toward the katakana-go in the following five groups : goverment offices(sender of katakana-go), newspaper offices(conveyor), aged people(receiver), welfare offices for the aged(near receiver) and Japanese language teachers(near receiver).The results is following :1)Few prefectures are seriously tackling the issues of katakana-go.2)Transcription of katakana-go varies from prefecture to prefecture.3)About 50% of the aged peop1e group want some unified criteria of the katakana-go usage.4)Newspaper offices most often insist upon the replacement the katakana-go with kanji and/or hiragana, though overall, katakana-go with an explanation is overwhelmingly supported.5) Among the 12 words listed in the questionnaire, the well-known ones are for katakana transcription(saabisu 'service', borantia 'volunteer', ibento 'event'), although new coined ones proved to be against(ameniti 'amenity', bariahurii 'barrier-free', inhoomudokonsento 'informed consent' etc.).