Wasei-eigo

Wasei-eigo (和製英語 wasei eigo, lit. "Made-in-Japan English") are Japanese pseudo-Anglicisms : English constructions not in use in Anglophone countries nor by English native speakers, but only by speakers of Japanese. A more general term for made-in-Japan foreign words is wasei-gairaigo, which usually applies to words made from European languages.

Related Topics:
Japanese - Pseudo-Anglicism - English - Anglophone - Wasei-gairaigo

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One example is the word desk (デスク: desuku). It seems like perfectly good English, but in Japan, it is a title for a person. Tanaka-desk would be a reporter or editor in charge of a department at a newspaper (for example, the city desk). Similarly, mansion (:ja:マンション: manshon) refers not to a mansion, but an apartment or its building. Wasei-eigo words can form compounds with Japanese words, for example, okushon (億ション) combines oku, meaning hundred million, with "mansion" to form a new word meaning "luxury apartment". This is actually a pun, since the word "man" means "ten thousand" in Japanese: "oku-shon" is ten thousand times more than "man-shon". Sometimes, two English words with their normal meanings will be combined to form a new compound word. One famous instance is famicom (ファミコン: famikon or :ja:ファミリーコンピュータ: family computer), a portmanteau of "family" and "computer", meaning a video game system (especially, but not necessarily, the Famicom, known to the rest of the world as the Nintendo Entertainment System). Sometimes the resulting words make as much, or more, sense than their standard English equivalents. (see: fried potato or recycle shop in the examples.)

Related Topics:
Reporter - :ja:マンション - Apartment - Luxury - Pun - :ja:ファミリーコンピュータ - Computer - Portmanteau - Video game - Famicom - Nintendo Entertainment System - Examples

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Some wasei-eigo have in turn been borrowed as pseudo-Anglicisms in other countries. For example, 아파트 apatu in Korean is clearly borrowed from the Japanese word apāto, not the English word apartment.

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For an extensive list of terms, see the List of Gairaigo and Wasei-eigo terms.

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