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A PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS OF CROSSLINGUISTIC LEXICAL SIMILARITIESBETWEEN ENGLISH AND JAPANESE	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  	  ISSN 2187-4972	  	  	  Keith Barrs
Corresponding author:
keith-b@kanda.kuis.ac.jp
Publication date: February, 2013

To cite this article
Barrs, K. (2013). A preliminary analysis of cross-linguistic lexicalsimilarities between English and Japanese. Working Papers inLanguage Education and Research, 1 (1), 11-20.

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	  Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	  1	  No.	  1.	  February	  2013,	  11	  -­‐	  20	  	  A PRELIMINARY ANALAYIS OF CROSS-LINGUISTIC LEXICALSIMILARITIES BETWEEN ENGLISH AND JAPANESE.

Keith Barrs
Kanda University of International Studies

ABSTRACT
Cross-linguistic similarities found between any two languages can havepositive pedagogical implications for all participants in the language
learning process. This article reports on a small-scale investigation into
the quantity of English words existing in the Japanese lexicon through astudy of English loanword occurrences in a week of Japanese-language
newspaper articles. The results show that there is clear evidence of an
integrated English sub-lexicon in the Japanese language, which can beconceptualised as a useful linguistic resource for Japanese learners ofEnglish.

1. INTRODUCTION

An examination of the Japanese language which looks at English words encodedin the script of katakana, the script primarily employed in modern Japanese to represent
words of foreign origin, reveals a vast quantity of English-based lexical items that havebeen integrated into the workings of the Japanese vocabulary. It is at this level ofanalysis, with words that exist as a sub-lexicon of the Japanese language, that any crosslinguistic lexical similarities could benefit the Japanese learner of English; one such
benefit being the reduction of the ‘learning burden’ involved in the acquisition ofvocabulary (Nation, 1990). This article reports on a small-scale research investigation	  11	  	  Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	  1	  No.	  1.	  February	  2013,	  11	  -­‐	  20	  	  into the extent to which English vocabulary can be said to be integrated into theJapanese lexicon and, as such, be potentially available as a sub-lexicon to Japaneselearners of English. Despite the small-scale nature of this research, it is hoped that thefindings can contribute to a further understanding of to what extent English words form
a sub-lexicon of the Japanese language and are potentially available as a cross-linguisticknowledge resource to Japanese learners of English (see Daulton, 2008 for a related but
much larger-scale study).

2. METHODOLOGYThis study reports on inventory research into the extent of English languagelexical item incorporation and integration into a complete week of Japanese-language
newspaper front pages. The research involved (1) a quantitative analysis of instances ofEnglish language items encoded in the katakana script and (2) an examination ofwhether these items exist with or without a translation into native or Sino-Japaneseequivalents. The purpose of the first part of the investigation is to shed light on one
specific example of English lexical item incorporation in the Japanese language.
Subsequently, the purpose of the second part of the investigation is to offer insights intothe extent to which these English lexical items are fully integrated into the syntacticaland semantic workings of the Japanese sentence. This is done by analysing whether or
not the incorporated English lexical items occur with a translation into native-Japaneseor Sino-Japanese vocabulary, a practice that would suggest the incorporated item
presents difficulties in its understanding and therefore has not been fully integrated intoJapanese.	  

12	  	  Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	  1	  No.	  1.	  February	  2013,	  11	  -­‐	  20	  	  For this study it was decided to randomly select a full week of front pages, thestart day and month were chosen by generating two numbers randomly, one number
being generated from the range 1 to 12 to select the month, and the second number thenbeing randomly generated from the number of days in that month to select the start dayof the week. This number generation led to May 13th being the start day with seven front
pages collected for analysis, ending on May 19th. The entire front page (except thebottom section containing a regular block of adverts and any other variously placedadverts) was selected for analysis. The exclusion of adverts was because of the different
nature of foreign word usage in this genre, where foreign words and especially those ofEnglish appear in a variety of scripts and often for a more decorative (symbolic)purpose (see: Haarmann, 1984; Takashi, 1990).
The articles were scanned for katakana items, which were listed in an Excel file,and then categorised by language of origin into the groups: (1) English Foreign
Language (EFL), representing any individual or hybrid item corresponding to words inthe English language; (2) Other Foreign Language (OFL), representing any language
other than Japanese and English; and (3) Japanese Language (JL), representing nativeand Sino-Japanese items.
The next stage involved reanalysing each front page both to catch any missed
katakana lexical items, but more importantly to analyse each instance of katakana
English for the occurrence of a native-Japanese and/or Sino-Japanese translation. Anytranslation occurrence was recorded alongside the entry of the lexical item. The entries
were then summed by (1) total of types, (2) total of tokens, (3) total of items bylanguage category, and (4) total of English-derived items with/without a translation.	  

13	  	  Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	  1	  No.	  1.	  February	  2013,	  11	  -­‐	  20	  	  3. DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

The total number of lexical item types found on the front pages of one week of
the Asahi Shinbun newspaper, in the katakana script, totalled 222. The number oftokens totalled 313. This figure excludes proper nouns such as names and places which
totalled 105 occurrences. Table 1 shows details of the research findings for each front
page and shows that there were on average 31.7 katakana item types and 44.7 tokens
found across the seven pages. A complete count of all characters/words in all scripts oneach front page was beyond the scope and practical means of this research, but eachfront page can be divided up into, on average, 6 sections (4 main articles, an opinion
piece and a side bar which acts as a newspaper index) which means that each section
had an average of 4.5 katakana word types and 6.4 tokens incorporated into the text.
Such an important but relatively infrequent occurrence of katakana is typical of theregular make up of writing involving the three main Japanese scripts, where there is a
mix of kanji, as the most frequent, hiragana as the second most frequent, and katakanaas the least frequent script (Shibatani, 1990; Gottlieb, 2005). In this respect, there
existed several articles with zero occurrences of katakana, but no articles were foundthat only consisted of kanji or hiragana.	  

14	  	  Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	  1	  No.	  1.	  February	  2013,	  11	  -­‐	  20	  	  Table 1.
A Frequency Count of Katakana Script Types and Tokens on the 7 Front Pages
Front Page

Katakana Script Items: Type

Katakana Script Items: Token

May 13th21

32

May 14th35

47

May 15th28

38

May 16th25

30

May 17th43

60

May 18th

33

59

May 19th

37

47

Total:

222313

Average:

31.7

44.7

Date

The next stage of analysis, shown in Table 2, categorises all of the 222 katakana
item types into the two lexical strata of: (1) Japanese Language (JL) (including NativeJapanese and Sino-Japanese), and (2) Foreign Language (FL) (including all foreign
languages except for Chinese which is a foreign language traditionally grouped into theJapanese Language strata). It is clear that the vast majority (92.3%) of katakana items
are those within the foreign words strata of the Japanese lexicon. This finding is in linewith the principal purpose of this script, to be used for the representation of foreign
items used in the Japanese language (Shibatani, 1990). The languages within this FL
strata as found on the seven front pages are (1) English (e.g. モニトリング	  15	  	  Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	  1	  No.	  1.	  February	  2013,	  11	  -­‐	  20	  	  /monitoring/monitoring), (2) German (e.g. テーマ/teema/thema), (3) Portuguese (パン/pan/pão), (4) Dutch (コーヒー/koohii/koffie), (5) French (ピーマン/piiman/piment)and (6) Korean (ユッケ/yukke/yukhoe).

Table 2.
Number and Percentage of Types in the Japanese (JL) and Foreign (FL) Lexical Strata
Lexical Strata

Number of Types

Percentage of Types

Japanese (JL)

17

7.7%

Foreign (FL)

205

92.3%

Total:

222

100%

Table 3 unpacks the FL strata items into: (1) English Foreign Language (EFL),and (2) Other Foreign Language (OFL). Here it is clear that the overwhelming majority(95%) of FL items are of English origin. Some of these items have beenmorphologically modified when absorbed into Japanese, such as the shortened アパー
ト/apaarto/apart being used in place of アパートメント/apaartomento/apartment andスーパー/suupaa/super being used in place of the longer スーパーマーケット/suupaamaaketto/supermarket, but they are still derived from English language lexicalitems. Even if the items are now considered to be words of the Japanese language morethan the English language, due to their modifications within the host language, theextent to which the items appear in the newspapers, in any modified manner, clearlyshows the extensive incorporation of the English language into Japanese. But in order to	  16	  	  Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	  1	  No.	  1.	  February	  2013,	  11	  -­‐	  20	  	  claim that the words are integrated into Japanese, in a linguistic sense, whereby thewords can be seen as a fully functional semantic and syntactical part of the sentence, itis necessary to show whether or not the EFL items have been translated. The existenceof a translation occurring with the English-derived lexical items would suggest that theword is probably beyond the comprehension of the intended reader, and therefore thatthe item has not been fully linguistically integrated. It could be suggested in this sensethat words appearing with a translation are employed more for a stylistic (symbolic)than linguistic purpose.
Table 3.
Number and Percentage of English (EFL) and Other Foreign Language (OFL) Types
FL Strata

Number of Types

Percentage of TypesEnglish (EFL)

195

95%

Other (OFL)105%

Total:

205

100%

Divisions

Table 4 shows the occurrence of EFL items with and without a translation. As isclear, the vast majority of items (96.4%) are not associated with a translation and only 7
English-derived words found in the data set, of a total of 195, had a translation
occurring either before or after the placement of the lexical item. This clearly showsthat the vast majority of English-derived items found in the front pages have been fully
integrated into the linguistic workings of this particular print medium.	  

17	  	  Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	  1	  No.	  1.	  February	  2013,	  11	  -­‐	  20	  	  Table 4.
Number and Percentage of Types of EFL Items Occurring With/Without a Translation
Translation

Number of Types

Percentage of Types

With Translation

7

3.6%

Without Translation

188

96.4%

Total:

195

100%

Occurence

The lexical items appearing with a translation, and their associated frequencies,
are listed in Table 5. One of the items, メルトダウン/meltdown, occurred 4 times andis associated with the nuclear crisis following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. It issignificant that this item also appeared 3 times across the 7 front pages with noassociated translation, suggesting that the use of a translation was more a personal
choice of the article writer than a particular necessity connected with the difficulty ofthe word.	  

18	  	  Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	  1	  No.	  1.	  February	  2013,	  11	  -­‐	  20	  	  Table 5.
The Katakana English-Derived Lexical Items Appearing With a Translation
Katakana Lexical Item

English Equivalent Frequency

メルトダウンMeltdown4エコタウンEco Town1

シビアアクシデント

Severe Accident

1

ロードマップRoad Map

1

4. CONCLUSION

The preceding analysis and discussion shows that there is not only a large
number of English-derived lexical items incorporated into this particular print medium(195 types), but also that there is a very high level of integration of these items into thelinguistic workings of the newspaper front pages (96.4% having no translation). This
clearly indicates that English is playing more than just a symbolic role in this context:
the incorporated and integrated lexical items are acting as fully functioning linguisticbuilding blocks in the syntactical and semantic construction of the front pages.
The findings show that even in this small-scale research investigation, focusing
on one specific literature medium, a vast amount of integrated English vocabulary could
be found embedded in the Japanese language. This raises the issue of implications forJapanese learners of English who could draw on this sub-lexicon when engaged in
English-language studies (see Daulton, 2008; Ringbom, 2007 for similar discussions),	  19	  	  Working	  Papers	  in	  Language	  Education	  and	  Research	  Vol.	  1	  No.	  1.	  February	  2013,	  11	  -­‐	  20	  	  and such implications can form the basis of further research investigations into the areaof the extent of similarities found between the items in the English sub-lexicon ofJapanese and the English-language equivalents.

5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to RILS&LE for assistance with the funding to present this activity at a
research seminar at the University of Leicester, 2012.
6. REFERENCES

Daulton, F.E. (2008). Japan’s built in lexicon of English-based loanwords. Clevendon:
Multilingual Matters Ltd.
Gottlieb, N. (2005). Language and society in Japan. Cambridge: CUP.
Haarman, H. (1984). The role of ethnocultural stereotypes and foreign languages inJapanese commercials. International Journal of Sociology of Language, 50, 101121.
Nation, I.S.P. (1990). Teaching and learning vocabulary. Boston: Heinle & Heinle
Publishers.
Ringbom, H. (2007). The importance of cross-linguistic similarities. The Language
Teacher, 31(9), 3-5.
Shibatani, M. (1990). The languages of Japan. Cambridge: CUP.
Takashi, K. (1990). A socio-linguistic analysis of English borrowings in Japanese
advertising texts. World Englishes, 9(3), 327-341.	  

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