Japanese loan words in Chinese

[Ian_Lee]

During the early part of last century, a lot of western concepts were first translated into Kanji in Japan during and after the Meiji Restoration.

Later they were adopted by the Chinese students in Japan into Chinese vocabulary. Words like "economics", "logic", "capitalism"....etc were adopted from Japan during this period.

But even lately some Japanese words start to surface in HK and Taiwan media and even Mainland media.

For example, the Japanese word "ninki" -- popularity -- in Chinese "ren chi" has been widely used in the Chinese media.

[pazu]

and 奸爸爹 too!

[confucius]

My favorite Japanese loan word is the Chinese-English character combo of "ka la" and "OK"

[Quest]

How do you write karaoke in Japanese, is it written in Chinese characters?

[pazu]

it's written in katakana　（カラオケ）, strictly speaking KARA can be written as "空" which means "empty" in Japanese (but nobody writes like this), OKE is the English word "Orchestra", so Empty Orchestra means KARAOKE.

[Guest Anonymous]

Was "ninja" used by Chinese before? I know in Cantonese, it's "yen jea," but is that an original Chinese word?

Despite popular notion, ninjas are actually a Chinese creation rather than Japanese, but what were they called?

[pazu]

hamsuplo:

Here's a website that said about the origin of Ninja, http://ninja.go.nease.net/rzxy/rs-chuanshuo.htm (in Simp Chinese), but another Japanese site seems to have some little different information:

http://homepage1.nifty.com/kumori-hibi/edo/hito/nin2.html though it did say Ninja were greatly influenced by the Chinese Martial Arts.

[ala]

The most famous is shehui (shakai): society. Dianhua (denwa) is also pretty good.

[bathrobe]

You need to distinguish between Japanese words created on Chinese models (like 'shehui' etc.) and Japanese words that are purely Japanese, but are written with Chinese characters.

For an example of the latter, try 'shouxu' (formality, procedure) from 'tetsuzuki' and 'qudi' (crackdown) from 'torishimari'. One of my bosses (Chinese) showed me how this sort of thing happens. We were in Hongkong and he asked where we could find a 'liangtisuo'. I had no idea what he was talking about until he told me the characters: they were the characters for the Japanese 'ryougae-sho', or 'currency exchange booth'! He must have thought they were some trendy Cantonese term!

Then there are also words that were brought in phonetically, like 'ta ta mi' in Taiwan, also used on the Mainland. These are not very common.

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Although the Chinese borrowed a lot of vocabulary from the Japanese (like shehui, jingji, etc.), it was in many ways a two-process. The Japanese actually got their start from the Chinese, I believe. Back in the 1850s and 1860s, quite a few Chinese translations of Western books were done in China, then taken to Japan where the Japanese read them avidly. Later, the traffic from Japan to China was probably heavier.

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I don't know if it's appropriate to do this here, but I have a page dealing with the writing of bird names in Japanese.

http://www.cjvlang.info/Birds/intro7.html

What is interesting is that the Japanese originally borrowed a lot of Chinese characters to write their bird names. Because there were many names for which suitable Chinese characters did not exist, the Japanese sometimes changed the meaning of Chinese characters or made up their own characters. Then, when the Chinese were borrowing Western knowledge in the 19th-20th centuries, they borrowed the names back -- but the characters had their new Japanese meanings. So these are in effect Chinese borrowings from Japanese, although of a convoluted kind. (Taiwanese bird names retain a lot of the Japanese namings. Mainland names have gradually, but not completely, moved away).

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The infiltration of Japanese terms still seems to be going on in Taiwan. I was interested several years ago to notice that Taiwanese newspapers used the Japanese expression for a 'two-day weekend'. In Japanese it's 'shuukyuu futsuka-sei'. I think the Taiwanese used 'Zhou xiu er ri zhi', if I remember rightly. I can't remember the Mainland equivalent, but it was definitely different.

[ala]

You need to distinguish between Japanese words created on Chinese models (like 'shehui' etc.) and Japanese words that are purely Japanese, but are written with Chinese characters. For an example of the latter, try 'shouxu' (formality, procedure) from 'tetsuzuki' and 'qudi' (crackdown) from 'torishimari'. One of my bosses (Chinese) showed me how this sort of thing happens. We were in Hongkong and he asked where we could find a 'liangtisuo'. I had no idea what he was talking about until he told me the characters: they were the characters for the Japanese 'ryougae-sho', or 'currency exchange booth'! He must have thought they were some trendy Cantonese term!

Why is it necessary to distinguish? Aren't both types Japanese words? Just because one consists of characters pronounced with the ancient Chinese pronounciation, does not make the word Chinese unless if the Chinese loan it themselves (which they did for shakai but Japanese coinage nevertheless). Shakai is thoroughly a Japanese word, it's besides the point that the Japanese decided to use the Go-on (Wu Dynasty sounds) pronounciation as opposed to Yamato (which would be pronounced: yashiro-au). Pronouncing society as yashiro-au (Shinto Shrine-meet) would have lost the subtleties involved in the word "society." Chinese however does not have such luxury to select pronounciation.

Also, 兩替所 ryougaesho is a hybrid of Japanese and Chinese pronounciations. ryou = liang. sho = suo. gae is Yamato pronounciation. Full Chinese pronounciation will be something like ryoudaisho.

I know what you mean.. But I don't see why there's a need to differentiate once the word enters the Chinese lexicon. It's like coining English words from Latin roots and then having Italy taking up that new word (though there is the added complexity of pronounciation differences and script similarities between Chinese and Japanese). It's still a foreign word needing to be loaned in. The ones where it is fully Japanese pronounciation would be conceived as more foreign only by their pronounciation, but the Chinese don't loan pronounciation anyway (Taiwan aside) and instead loan the character combinations. So both classes (plus hybrid) seem to have same result.

Although the Chinese borrowed a lot of vocabulary from the Japanese (like shehui, jingji, etc.), it was in many ways a two-process. The Japanese actually got their start from the Chinese, I believe. Back in the 1850s and 1860s, quite a few Chinese translations of Western books were done in China, then taken to Japan where the Japanese read them avidly. Later, the traffic from Japan to China was probably heavier.

Yes. It was both ways. There's a published English-Chinese dictionary in 1815 that had a lot of these new terms coined by Chinese writers. They were formed mainly from classical texts or Buddhist scriptures. Japanese dictionaries even in 1866 didn't have them yet (though were later incorporated).

These are first coined from Chinese:

workman = gongren

liberty = ziyou

literature = wenxue

occasion, opportunity = jihui

naturally = ziran

thought = sixiang

unemployment = shiye

reasoning, theory = lilun

economy, statesmanship = jingji

Jingji/keizai was first coined by the CHINESE, contrary to popular belief. However, the exact definition was later sharpened to only economy by Japanese usage.

However, Japanese writer Nishi Amane coined about 200 words which are still in high distribution in both Japan and China. Quite a few though were inspired from Chinese classical texts. But I believe Shehui and Dianhua are Japanese without much reference to the classics.

[bathrobe]

Why do you need to distinguish?

Because the Japanese themselves do. The difference is between words written with kun-yomi (tetsuzuki) and on-yomi (shakai). All Japanese are aware of this difference because it is basic to their vocabulary (which is not, of course, to deny the existence of exceptions or hybrids).

Words in on-yomi, or Sino-Japanese compounds, are created in accordance with the principles of Chinese word building. The Japanese are consciously aware that they are creating Chinese-style words -- especially in that era when they were more literate in kanbun, they looked to the Chinese Classics as models.

Words in kun-yomi are native Japanese words. They are created in accordance with the principles of native word building. 'Tetsuzuki' is created from 'te' and 'tsuzuku'. 'Torishimari' is from 'toru' and 'shimaru'. These both end with verbs in a nominalised form (tsuzuku -> tsuzuki, shimaru -> shimari).

'Shakai' was, as far as I know, created from scratch as a Chinese style compound, not as the Sinicised form of 'yashiro-ai'. (I would be willing to believe otherwise if you can provide evidence, but I don't think that was the case. That is not to say that this did not happen. 'Rippuku' is a good example of a Japanese expression converted into a Chinese-style compound, but even here the order is deliberately changed from a Japanese noun + predicate construction (hara wo tateru) to a pseudo-Chinese verb + noun construction (rippuku).

In other words, on-yomi words were ready-made Chinese words, as easy to absorb as 'globalization' is by the Germans or the French ('globalisation', 'Globalisation'). Kun-yomi words are not ready-made Chinese words, and they are strange-looking by ordinary standards of Chinese word-building.

True, the Chinese are largely oblivious to these distinctions -- it just has to be written in Chinese characters and they assume it is a word -- which is why this kind of borrowing (based on a surface reading of the characters) takes place.

[holyman]

Although the Chinese borrowed a lot of vocabulary from the Japanese (like shehui, jingji, etc.), it was in many ways a two-process. The Japanese actually got their start from the Chinese, I believe. Back in the 1850s and 1860s, quite a few Chinese translations of Western books were done in China, then taken to Japan where the Japanese read them avidly. Later, the traffic from Japan to China was probably heavier.

i think there is some misunderstandings here. the japanese started taking in western ideas much earlier, especially the southern kyushu island, where the 'trading with southern barbarians' took place. they learned from the dutch initially and western studies were named ran-gaku（兰学）, or holland studies, and everything fashionable and trendy then were suffixed with a ran-something, like goldfish from ming china became 'ranchu'.

[holyman]

'Shakai' was, as far as I know, created from scratch as a Chinese style compound, not as the Sinicised form of 'yashiro-ai'.

in ancient chinese the kanji 'sha' and 'kai' both means a gathering of the townfolks for party and celebration, usually plus a trade fair, on religious holidays/events. so i think it means the same as 'yashiro ai'. the japanese probably borrowed it entirely from the original chinese meaning but changed its context afterwards.

[ala]

Why do you need to distinguish?

'Shakai' was' date=' as far as I know, created from scratch as a Chinese style compound, not as the Sinicised form of 'yashiro-ai'. [/quote']

Shakai was a conscious decision to choose Chinese style word building, mainly because a new word was needed that could be more removed and abstract from existing yet incomplete words for society (nakama 仲間　and yo-no-naka　世の中), as well as independent from daily used terms (yashiro　社 and au　会う). But what I was saying earlier was that, once the word entered Chinese lexicon, this characteristic in the Japanese language becomes oblivious to Chinese users and the issue of needing to separate the two types of word building is quite trivial to Chinese users since both become read and contextualized in the Chinese system. For example MSG (monosodium glutamate 味精) in Shanghainese is 味之素. I wonder how many people know that it is from Japanese 味の素 (aji-no-moto), much less that it is from the Japanese-style of word building. Chinese word building itself has many exceptions, so it is hard to say with conviction from looking at a word alone without knowing the history.

[bathrobe]

Very good. Now please tell me what a 'yashiro-ai' is. I have never heard the word in Japanese. But maybe you have.

[bathrobe]

i think there is some misunderstandings here. the japanese started taking in western ideas much earlier, especially the southern kyushu island, where the 'trading with southern barbarians' took place

Quite true. The Japanese were absorbing Western knowledge earlier than Meiji.

I was specifically referring to the period indicated at the start of this thread:

western concepts were first translated into Kanji in Japan during and after the Meiji Restoration

--although in my posting I did refer to 1850s / 1860s, which was the very end of the Edo period. You could take it back to the Rangaku era, and I seem to remember that there was influence from works written in Chinese about Western science even at that time (would need to check this up).

[bathrobe]

Why do you need to distinguish?

'Shakai' was' date=' as far as I know, created from scratch as a Chinese style compound, not as the Sinicised form of 'yashiro-ai'. [/quote']

But what I was saying earlier was that, once the word entered Chinese lexicon, this characteristic in the Japanese language becomes oblivious to Chinese users and the issue of needing to separate the two types of word building is quite trivial to Chinese users since both become read and contextualized in the Chinese system.

Yes, Chinese users are oblivious to this. So you are saying: 'This word originally came from Japan and that's all we need to know'. OK, that's fine.

By the same token, Chinese users are also mostly oblivious to the fact these words were made in Japan. Does that mean we can ignore the fact that are borrowed words altogether?

[ala]

By the same token, Chinese users are also mostly oblivious to the fact these words were made in Japan. Does that mean we can ignore the fact that are borrowed words altogether?

Was that a question directed to the heavens, or are you saying something different from what I have been saying all along? Clearly I haven't been the one suggesting that the Chinese coined shakai. I don't think I have been ambiguous about the origin of the COINAGE of these words.

Yes, Chinese users are oblivious to this. So you are saying: 'This word originally came from Japan and that's all we need to know'. OK, that's fine.

Yes, because the Japanese word building system becomes lost to Chinese-only speakers, and Chinese characters are flexible enough to change between predicate, modifer, etc so that a Chinese person can internalize the word as China's own creation whether or not the word building tradition was originally Japanese or Chinese. Shakai as one coherent word was first coined by the Japanese regardless of the fact that Chinese characters, or Chinese-style word creation was taken into consideration. Its coinage is no more Chinese. The issue was who coined these compound-character words, not the tradition to which they were coined from. In the case of Shakai, the Japanese coined it. And then you tell me that I need to make a distinction between the two traditions of coinage, which is clearly going off a tangent. Does it change the argument at all that the Japanese coined Shakai? No.

Suppose we continue your tangent, then yes... there is a distinction. This distinction however has not really affected how the word has been adopted by the Chinese, which is to take the characters wholesale and pronounce them typically with 文读 readings. One argument can be made that 手续shouxu is really a Chinese word since its loan from the Japanese has changed greatly in pronounciation. But the same orthography prohibits this thinking. Another argument that can be made when applying the distinction is that Shakai though coined by the Japanese is really still a "Chinese word" and one should not definitely say the word is Japanese. (Was this your point??) Somewhat true, but nevertheless doesn't change fact that the Japanese coined it, and that it was later adopted by China. And because the Chinese tradition of word formation is also deeply ingrained into Japanese orthography, shakai was indeed a Japanese creation (from the Chinese tradition existing in the Japanese language) for the purpose of expressing a Western concept in Japanese literature and academia. So to sum up, yes there is a distinction, but it is nothing to be worked up about as this added tidbit poses no conflict or new insight to the notions of the transfer of neologisms from Japan to China.

And the transfer was both ways.

[bathrobe]

We are talking about the translation into Kanji in Japan during and after the Meiji Restoration, and the fact that they were later adopted by the Chinese students

Note that there were at least two steps in the process:

1. Creation by the Japanese

2. Borrowing by the Chinese

It was the peculiar nature of the process by which Chinese borrowed Japanese words (except for a few exceptions like karaoke and tatami, they borrowed the _characters- not the sounds) that led to the flattening down of distinctions in the creative process.

By focussing on the fact of borrowing to the exclusion of everything else, you choose to close your eyes to the rather interesting effects of this 'flattening down'. You justify this on the curious grounds that the Chinese are oblivious to it!

I find yours an extraordinarily Sinocentric view of things. It is precisely this flattening down that makes the whole process interesting, not the simple fact that the words were borrowed from Japanese.

In an even stranger twist, you try to justify closing your eyes to these complexities by coming up with a totally spurious model of word-creation in Japanese, namely that they decided on the characters first and only then decided how they would read them. By your reckoning, 'shakai' and 'yashiro-au' are equally likely coinages for the Meiji period modernisers, which is nonsense!

If you wish to close your eyes, go ahead, but your view of the whole matter is one-dimensional, to say the least.™

[ala]

It was the peculiar nature of the process by which Chinese borrowed Japanese words (except for a few exceptions like karaoke and tatami, they borrowed the _characters- not the sounds) that led to the flattening down of distinctions in the creative process.

Yes. That is what I have been saying for the past 5 posts.

By focussing on the fact of borrowing to the exclusion of everything else, you choose to close your eyes to the rather interesting effects of this 'flattening down'. You justify this on the curious grounds that the Chinese are oblivious to it!

No, I justify this on the fact that the Chinese language does not make the distinction, and since this is a Chinese language discussion, your repeated efforts to demonstrate your knowledge of Japanese is extremely ill placed. I also said before that it is UNFORTUNATE that the Chinese language CANNOT differentiate the two types since the transmission is via wholesale characters; as result your continual insistence that there are two distinctions in the transfer is an attempt of deliberate and senseless altercation with me. From the Chinese perspective AND usage of these loan words, there is no distinction. The functional need to distinguish never arises from the start when they enter the Chinese language. Any distinction that may have existed in Japanese, interesting as it may, is superfluous to the discussion of the Chinese language. Do you understand this?

I find yours an extraordinarily Sinocentric view of things. It is precisely this flattening down that makes the whole process interesting, not the simple fact that the words were borrowed from Japanese.

I appear Sinocentric because this isn't a Japanese language discussion, but one regarding the Chinese usage of these Japanese words. Yes, the flattening down is interesting, but this is a phenomenon of the Chinese language, irregardless of the number of distinctions present in Japanese. So your insistence on the need to distinguish in the Chinese language is moot because there is NO NEED NOR THE CAPACITY to distinguish in Chinese on the language level. Yes, we are aware there is a distinction in Japanese words in the Japanese language and that it gets lost when it enters the Chinese lexicon. But it was not lost because of ignorance, but because of INHERENT CONSTRAINTS in the Chinese language and its usage of the script. Hence, there is no need for us to make such a distinction when we study these words as used in Chinese. The original issue of loan words from Japan is interesting on the basis that Chinese didn't have these words before (the loan words thus served a functional purpose). But your perisitent case on the need for further distinction of these loan words in the Chinese language is vain and irrelevant, as this additional distinction would serve no functional use in the Chinese language. I'm not saying you are wrong about the distinctions and the flattingdown, just what are you trying to prove and argue? Do you have a point? Or do you just like to argue and flaunt trivia?

In an even stranger twist, you try to justify closing your eyes to these complexities by coming up with a totally spurious model of word-creation in Japanese, namely that they decided on the characters first and only then decided how they would read them. By your reckoning, 'shakai' and 'yashiro-au' are equally likely coinages for the Meiji period modernisers, which is nonsense!

No. I never made such assertion, I speak Japanese and am very well knowledged regarding this. You keep bringing up the yashiro　au example I made. It was originally used to make the point that it doesn't matter how the word for "society" was made, whether formed from Chinese tradition or Japanese tradition, it was still a Japanese word, and any semantic distinction would have been inherently lost once the character combinations entered the Chinese language. yashiro-au is obviously made up (perhaps au-yashiro more reasonable) and would not have been made during the Meiji period. You have clearly taken this example way too far, once again, arguing for the joy of arguing.

If you wish to close your eyes, go ahead, but your view of the whole matter is one-dimensional, to say the least.™

Except your self-proclaimed multidimensional view is but a superfluous annotation.