This article needs additional citations for verification. Japanese has a large number of loan words from Chinese, accounting for a sizeable fraction of the language. These words were borrowed during ancient russian dating words and are written in kanji. For a list of terms, see the List of gairaigo and wasei-eigo terms.

Japanese has a long history of borrowing from foreign languages. It has been doing so since the late fourth century AD. Some ancient “gairaigo” words are still being used nowadays, but there are also many kinds of “gairaigo” words that were borrowed more recently. In the past, more gairaigo came from other languages besides English. The first period of borrowing occurred during the late fourth century AD, when a massive number of Chinese characters were adopted. This period could be considered as one of the most significant history of “gairaigo”, because it was the first moment when the written communication systems, such as Kanji and Hiragana, were formed.

The first non-Asian countries to have extensive contact with Japan were Portugal and the Netherlands in the 16th and 17th centuries, and Japanese has several loanwords from Portuguese and Dutch, many of which are still used. German, and many artistic words such as rouge and Dessin came from French. Most of the Gairaigo since the nineteenth century came from English. Japan also had extensive contact with Germany, and gained many loanwords from German, particularly for Western medicine, which the Japanese learned from the Germans. They also gained several loanwords from French at this time.

Some Modern Chinese borrowings occurred during the 17th and 18th centuries, due both to trade and resident Chinese in Nagasaki, and a more recent wave of Buddhist monks, the Ōbaku school, whose words are derived from languages spoken in Fujian. In 1889, there were 85 gairaigo of Dutch origin and 72 gairaigo of English origin listed in a Japanese dictionary. There have been some borrowings from Sanskrit as well, most notably for religious terms. These words are generally transliterations which were unknowingly borrowed from Chinese. Cognates In some cases, cognates or etymologically related words from different languages may be borrowed and sometimes used synonymously or sometimes used distinctly.

Wasei-kango In addition to borrowings, which adopted both meaning and pronunciation, Japanese also has an extensive set of new words that are crafted using existing Chinese morphemes to express a foreign term. These are known as wasei-kango “Japanese-made Chinese words”. In written Japanese, gairaigo are usually written in katakana. Due to Japanese pronunciation rules and its mora-based phonology, many words take a significant amount of time to pronounce. The Japanese language, therefore, contains many abbreviated and contracted words, and there is a strong tendency to shorten words. This also occurs with gairaigo words.

Some Japanese people are not aware of the origins of the words in their language, and may assume that all gairaigo words are legitimate English words. English, or rimokon, not realizing that the contraction of “remote control” to rimokon took place in Japan. Similarly, gairaigo, while making Japanese easier to learn for foreign students in some cases, can also cause problems due to independent semantic progression. Additionally, Japanese combines words in ways that are uncommon in English. As an example, left over is a baseball term for a hit that goes over the left-fielder’s head rather than uneaten food saved for a later meal. This is a term that appears to be a loan but is actually wasei-eigo. Japanese verb – in which the final syllable is converted into okurigana to enable conjugation.

Borrowings traditionally have had pronunciations that conform to Japanese phonology and phonotactics. The English words that are borrowed into Japanese include many of the most useful English words, including high-frequency vocabulary and academic vocabulary. Thus gairaigo may constitute a useful built-in lexicon for Japanese learners of English. Gairaigo have been observed to aid a Japanese child’s learning of ESL vocabulary. With adults, gairaigo assist in English-word aural recognition and pronunciation, spelling, listening comprehension, retention of spoken and written English, and recognition and recall at especially higher levels of vocabulary. Moreover, in their written production, students of Japanese prefer using English words that have become gairaigo to those that have not.