Can Japanese Speak in Pure Japanese?: The Inevitability of Gairaigo in Japanese

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.200325.077How to use a DOI?

Keywords

gairaigo, Japanese, konshugo, lexicon

Abstract

Japanese lexicon are divided into four categories, namely 1) Wago (words with pronunciation and morphology are in accordance with native Japanese linguistic conventions), 2) Kango (words introduced from China with kanji which are read using on-yomi pronunciation), 3) Gairaigo (words borrowed from foreign language), and 4) Konshugo (words come from combination of three previous categories). Gairaigo is one of Japanese lexicon that has the longest history. Other than Chinese, the first gairaigo came from Portuguese to Japan in 1549. This study aims to analyze the phenomenon of gairaigo use in recent Japanese daily conversation, by examining the use of gairaigo in a Youtube social experiment video entitled “Can Japanese Speak in Pure Japanese?” and four other Japan’s trending Youtube videos using transcription method. The results showed that Japanese speakers are rather difficult to speak in pure Japanese and use gairaigo occasionally, which tendency appeared in all videos. There are four reasons found why gairaigo is used frequently, namely 1) providing an alternative tone of discourse; 2) Naming imported things or ideas which did not exist in Japanese culture previously; 3) Often associated with a sophisticated culture, so the modern image is stronger; 4) Availability of more helpful common vocabulary. Along with globalization, contact between Japanese and other languages created more gairaigo, and gairaigo is getting widely used because of its aforementioned advantageous functions. Hence, it is necessary to include gairaigo when learning Japanese.

Copyright

© 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Aulia Raversa
AU  - Nuria Haristiani
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/03/31
TI  - Can Japanese Speak in Pure Japanese?: The Inevitability of Gairaigo in Japanese
BT  - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (ICOLLITE 2019)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 175
EP  - 180
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.200325.077
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.200325.077
ID  - Raversa2020
ER  -