Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 July 27

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July 27

Japanese loanwords

Does Japanese have any calques from English, or does it almost exclusively prefer to adapt it phonologically? For example, why two Yokohama Municipal Subway's Lines are gurīn and burū, rather than midori and ao? --40bus (talk) 19:00, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but they are apparently hard to detect. See Keisuke, Imamura (2018). "The Lexical Influence of English on Japanese Language: Toward Future Comparative Studies of Anglicisms" (PDF). Global Studies (2): 101–116. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DuncanHill (talk • contribs) 19:09, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

The concepts of green and blue were of course known to Japanese speakers before the loanwords gurīn and burū (even if the distinction wasn't always made), so if they used midori and ao it would be just using native words, not calquing. Nardog (talk) 20:07, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Our article Calque mentions the word skyscraper a lot, so I looked it up on Wiktionary, where in the descendants section there is Japanese: 摩天楼 (matenrō) (calque). This is ma-ten-ro, scraping-sky-edifice.  Card Zero  (talk) 01:12, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

The loan word ギター (gitā, "guitar") entered the Japanese lexicon well before the appearance of electric guitars, so 電気ギター (denki gitā) can be considered a calque of electric guitar. Likewise 伝送制御プロトコル (Densō Seigyo Purotokoru) for "Transmission Control Protocol". Proper nouns are often calqued, as they are in many languages, e.g. 東南アジア諸国連合 (Tōnan Ajia Shokoku Rengō) for "Association of Southeast Asian Nations" and 統一資源位置指定子 (Tōitsu Shigen Ichi Shiteishi) for "Uniform Resource Locator".  --Lambiam 23:35, 29 July 2023 (UTC)