Regarding ミルク and 牛乳 specifically, another weird nuance I've noticed is that while 牛乳 describes default milk in its original state, as soon as the 牛乳 is mixed in with other ingredients, it becomes ミルク. You get ミルクティー, ミルクチョコレート, イチゴミルク, etc. It's almost like 牛乳 is milk (the drink) but ミルク is milk (the ingredient).
@unintenuu yes. But if you add cows milk to tea and get milk tea it is not "cows milk tea" it is just "miruku" tea. That's the addition they are making in the nuance of its use
some Nihonjin have told me that ミルク is more used when ordering a glass of milk to drink in a restaurant and 牛乳 is more like when you go to buy milk at the store. Like you go buy 牛乳 to take home and you order ミルク to drink. Granted not every place has milk you can order at Japanese places to eat... lol but just for example go to McDonalds Japan website and look at the drink menu it's ミルク but go to a grocery store and get a half gallon of milk and it's always 牛乳 on the container. Also I can't recall my Japanese wife or any of my former Japanese girlfriends ever ordering 牛乳, I am almost 100% certain they have always used ミルク in some form or fashion whether standalone or in conjunction with another ingredient. I could be wrong, I normally don't order milk to drink when I go out to eat so I am not always paying complete attention.. haha I remember when I used to go to Sapporo, and I've only seen it in Hokkaido, but can't say for everywhere else in Japan, but never seen it in Tokyo area, Gifu, Nagoya area, Kyoto area, Osaka area, etc.. Anyways in Sapporo and Hokkaido most places had a milk based alcohol drink menu section and if i recall it was ミルク on the menus never 牛乳. Like I honestly don't remember a place my ex girlfriends up in Sapporo and I went to that didn't have a milk based alcohol drink menu, it was as common as a hiighball, sour based menu, a Campari, or cassis based menu, etc that you would typically find on any Japanese eating and drinking place. So my first 6 times to Japan were all in Hokkaido, it wasn't until the last week of my 6th trip that I finally went to Tokyo and I was scratching my head why everyplace we went to didn't have a milk based alcohol drink menu... lol Then I started asking people and everybody was kind of looking at me like I was crazy.. haha
I don't see it that way. 牛乳is specifically cow milk.ミルクis not specifically cow. the reason we Japanese do say ミルクティーinstead of 牛乳茶 is because milk tea came from outside Japan. 牛乳 can very much be an ingredient. 牛乳 and 豆乳are both ミルク.
I always found really interesting Japanese has adopted foreign words for words it already had, like with milk, or ドア vs 扉, or 中心 vs センター, or 机 vs デスク, etc... Then I realized English has basically the same thing with Latin words and Germanic words. Ghost vs Phantom, Guest vs Visitor, Busy vs Occupied, etc...
This is a false equivalency. English is a language that has developed through the conquests of nations and constant mixing of European languages. Many of these words evolved over time, too. Japanese people deciding to substitute in English words for perfectly fine words that _already exist in Japanese_ is just them pretending to be cool by using words from the most international language in the world.
English has so few Germanic words now (around 30%) that it’s basically a de facto Romance language, even grammar is more Romance than German (for example no cases). Most people would struggle reading a German text, while would get the most out of a French or Spanish one.
@ Scandinavian and Dutch don’t have cases either but they’re fully Germanic just like English is. English grammar is very similar to the Scandinavian languages which may be a result of Danelaw.
@@riccardoscotti4168 That isn't true when it comes to common words. They are mostly Germanic. E.g. "I have a bed" in German "Ich habe ein Bett" is a lot easier to understand for people with no German knowledge than 'J'ai un lit' to someone with no French experience. Also, most people in the US, Canada, Australia, etc. have some experience with either French or Spanish, but not German, which makes the text example biased. Numbers, family, many verbs, colours, etc. are way more similar in German.
As I was watching through this video I was thinking of examples of loanwords from French. Fo rnuance difference the French is often fancier, either in connotation or in literal meaning. "Grand" is just the French for "Big", but "Grand" has different, classier connotations. A "mansion" is *literally* a fancier house. And "escargot" used French to get Anglophones to consider snails as a food, like with seaweed vs nori.
French to English is rarely loan words. These are relics of language assimilation when the Normans invaded England, and it’s why there’s a massive overlap in the vocabulary of the two languages. Conversely, there are many English loan words in modern French, because of the omnipresence of American culture globally.
@@pseudonym6387 Restaurant is the defacto name for diners. Petite sounds cute but small/short sounds too literal when describing people. Just adding a couple more myself.
Absolutely love your channel and videos. One small criticism is the burned in subtitles. Whatever is transcribing your audio makes some mistakes that genuinely make some parts a little hard to follow. For example at 3:51 “or a sober [soba] shop”. Not trying to be a jerk, I just find myself skipping back several times thinking I have misunderstood or misheard. Given that Japanese is a foreign language to me (most of your viewers?) the subtitles help to follow your really good examples.
@@jamesx7424 I put a little visual note at the start of the video but CapCut kept reverting my subtitles while editing this time. It's a super glitchy app unfortunately. I just had to let some errors go through on this one, I'm sorry that it impacted your experience.
A random encounter with horizontal hyphens in otherwise vertical "Japanese" texts never fails to burn my eyes. I can't fathom why I've never seen any Japanese person/fluent-enough-Japanese-speaker rambling endlessly on this very specific blasphemy of spelling which unfortunately we are subject to see way too often.
Interestingly ミルク is not really used when describing 豆乳, soy milk, even though the word ソイミルク does exist. A Google images search seems to suggest that ソイミルク might be almost exclusively used for foreign products, and 豆乳 is the generic term.
Midwesterners just felt "sukoshi" in the very fiber of our being immediately upon encountering it, it seems like. "Skosh" is in our souls, like "ope". Saying "miruku" aloud, I can see why it got traction. It's got better mouthfeel than in English even? Or maybe that's just me.
Japan as a whole is actually a lot like the upper midwest, just how people are. Like I don't even think Nihonjin realize it because most Nihonjin when traveling to the US rarely come to the upper midwest. Chicago has a pretty decent Nihonjin population, but it is mostly due to either Nihonjin going to school there, or Nihonjin who have had to relocate there for work because there are quite a few Japanese companies who have a presence in the Chicagoland area, and of course the Japanese consulate for the midwest is there too. Whenever I see the hate on American videos for something an 'american' did, as someone who was born and raised in Wisconsin, my first reaction is always well those people were probably not raised in the upper midwest. Yeah I am biased, but I think anybody that really grew up in a good upper midwest environment would totally understand what I am saying. I also feel because of this, it is why I make friends with Nihonjin so easily here living in Japan, and having had come to Japan overall now for 13 years. We are just raised to be nice, polite, courteous, offer someone to come to your home for a meal even if you just met them, not shy to spark up a friendly conversation with a stranger or give the polite wave, head nod, pass by someone and say good morning. tell the clerk thank you, even after they have already thanked you. When I see videos of gaijin here saying they have a hard time making nihonjin friends in Japan, I also always think they must not be from the upper midwest... lol or another example is when i see videos of gaijin complaining about the work life in Japan, again I think hmm where were you brought up? It just seems like they were brought up in areas where the value of an honest days work equals an honest days pay mindset was never drilled into their minds. Japanese work life isn't hard, it is just what it is that's all. You live in Japan you should just put your best effort in, even back home I had worked for Costco for 10 years before moving to Japan, and I was always promoting to my coworkers at the end of our night merch shift that as long as you can go home after clocking out and you feel you gave your best effort that day, then you can go home feeling good
@@calvinsperberg3714Must be why Nerissa Ravencroft fits so organically with Hololive. The Midwest-Japan relationships are definitely very interesting. Isn't Michigan part of the Midwest as well? (I'm not American sorry). Detroit and the automobiles boom there also reminds me of Japan for some reason (except the deteriorating part)
This vid reminded me of a time where I learned what an English word meant because the Japanese word for it took the base Latin/Greek meaning and wrote it in Kanji. The word being hippocampus, which in Japanese is 海馬. All this time I didn't consider that the word just meant seahorse
it makes me think of how in the US “anime” refers to a specific type of japanese animation style. while in japan アニメ is just short for animation and refers to all animated shows. in the US spongebob is a cartoon and definitely not anime. but in japan spongebob is アニメ
@@scriptingjapan There's no correct answer, just as Eastern people learning English cannot view the relationships between English, German, and Latin in the same way that native English speakers do.
another rad phenomenon is when a language makes up a loanwords that never actually existed in the language its supposedly borrowed from. I think it's fun that people do that
Really lovely video, one of many that makes me retroactively contextualize experiences I've had in Japan. When I first got here, when I would see a loanword, I deep down thought "that is an English word that is being used here." But for the past year or two, I have recognized they are distinctly Japanese words with their own specific nuance.
In my recent years of learning Japanese I've been watching streams and YT vids where they use more casual and colloquial speech, and I've come to realize just how much English words they use for day-to-day speech. I've been telling my friend who wants to learn Japanese he could probably already hold a convo with a Japanese person if he just learns how to pronounce English in katakana eigo.
i think there's a whole scene in lucky star where they try not to use any loan words for a day and everyone keeps getting surprised when they remember/find out certain things are loan words. it might not have been lucky star, i could be misremembering
5:13 Aren't Japanese restaurants more likely to use ご飯 (gohan)? 米 (kome) is uncooked rice or the rice crop itself. If you're referring to cooked rice, you'd use ご飯 (gohan).
When I first started learning Japanese at school years, mobile phones were referred to as 携帯電話(ケータイ). Recently, I saw a video saying that no one uses that term anymore, and people prefer to say スマホ. Of course, this is not directly related to the video’s topic about loanwords when there are native ones, as the difference in definitions between these types of phones does exist. But you explain why the sense of novelty in words and meanings led to the point where no one uses keitai anymore. Why it’s a little surprise for me? In my language (Russian), 'mobile phone' or 'mobile' has been used for general reference for the last 20+ years, and it still continues to be used. As for 'smartphone,' it's too long, and it’s not the main term for a phone in everyday conversation. At least i think so😅
I noticed many loanwords in english from french as well. I went to a french immersion school from kindergarten(a german loanword btw) to middle school but switched to english for high school. There were some words that I had only heard in an academic context and thus only heard in french, so I was surprised to find that a lot of terms are the same between the languages. This might be more because of them having the same root words/etymology than being loanwords though.
Me native Japanese learning about Japanese with English Fun fact: コーヒーミルク: coffee whitener コーヒー牛乳: coffee added milk カフェラテ or カフェオレ: milk added coffee ミルクティー: milk added tea ミルク紅茶: milk added tea (rarely used) 牛乳ティー、牛乳紅茶: never saw these
You rock! Uロック lol The 牛乳 to ミルク example was enlightening. I really enjoy your indepth explanations and sourced reasoning, with implemented screenshots. Appreciate the effort, worth a sub!
good video but you're missing a little bit--in, japanese english loanwords are generally used for describing a specific context, so they actually do not have the same meaning. for your example with rice, if you look at the images you shared you'll notice that ライス almost always refers to rice served on a plate.
Currently happening to my native language too, *Malay language* . (has been for the past 20 years or so) We have native words, yet we still import many similar-meaning English words, into our vocab. And it is happening at the official, government level too.
Excellent video, very informative! I've studied 10 years and never noticed that "just a skoshe" (spelling?) and "sukoshi" are the same! Very interesting.
I never heard that word "skosh" (?sp) until I moved to Texas nine years ago. I immediately knew it came from "sukoshi," but people looked at me like I was crazy. And yet others in this comment thread are saying that "skosh" came from the upper Midwest. I lived in Minnesota for 16 years and never once heard it until I moved to Texas.
My favorite loan is ワンタン (Wonton) because the way Chinese writes it is 餛飩，but in Japanese 饂飩 is うどん (Udon) which, in turn, Chinese transliterates as 烏冬 (wūdōng), lit. "black winter". Being bilingual in Chinese and English, starting to learn Japanese is insanely fascinating.
And also, they used ラーメン instead of 拉麺 for ramen, which is literally the kanji and the chinese character of the word la mian (the origin of the word itself) You could use it. It's a valid kanji. But for some reason, they didn't use it.
@@Tryceattack this is a common myth. There's no evidence that a language having more words is bad for learning or makes it harder for children to acquire. Generally speaking most languages are filled with words no one uses; once there are a certain amount of words, some naturally fall out of use.
This also stems in Japanese from many words change their meaning depending on context. And the loner word is used to convey another context that didn't a traditionally exist in Japanese. Then sometimes in Japanese you might have a Three or more words that mean virtually the same thing and sometimes I use interchangeably and other times are used only in certain instances because you're trying to convey a certain context. Myself growing up speaking Japanese. It's second nature, but it's very difficult for Americans to wrap their heads around it. That's the same Japanese word can be translated multiple ways in English and they think you're lying. Kome, gohan, raisu, depending on context are interchangeable, and in other context or not. Like many Japanese, one of my favorite dishes is curry rice or kare raisu.
My main issue with loan words is that after I spent 6 months learning Japanese, I wanted to order "atsui koucha" but they called it "hotto tii" instead. Then I looked like a tool for correcting my parents for ordering "hotto tii" instead of "atsui koucha".
I grew up in the '60's and '70's referring to flip-flops as "zorries" without knowing the Japanese origin of the word. It was not until I saw a subtitled Japanese film where they put straw "zori" on corpses in preparation for a funeral that I realized the truth. The shoes were also called "thongs" back then. I don’t remember hearing them called "flip-flops" until the '80's, presumably to differentiate them from a style of underwear that was just coming into vogue.
@@scriptingjapanIn the Pacific Northwest of the US. My Canadian mom used the word; she had Japanese neighbors, so I thought maybe that was the source. However a coworker who grew up in South Seattle confirmed that he'd used the word as a kid as well. Seems like it was common before the '80's at least on the West Coast.
While watching, I'm thinking about how is this evident in the Philippines. Because we've been colonized by Spain and US, their words have been part of our everyday vocabulary even though we have our own equivalent... like berde (verde) = 'luntian' and presidente (president) = 'pangulo'.
What is frustrating to me about loanwords is that the meaning can change and become even more confusing. I am not super knowledgeable about it's etymology, but ストイック does not mean "stoic" even though that's clearly where the word comes from. In English, stoic means "One who is seemingly indifferent to or unaffected by joy, grief, pleasure or pain". In Japanese, sutoikku means "Someone who is very harsh on themselves". Things like this are very frustrating as a learner of Japanese. Or something like エピソード. You would think that it should be easy to ask a Japanese person "What episode are you at" since they have the word "episo-do", but turns out that is the wrong word to use when you actually mean episode.
I find it the hardest when the loanword has just a slightly different meaning. ストイック would probably fall into that category for me. It's still used in roughly the same contexts as the english word would. Meanwhile words like バイキング is only confusing in how it came to mean smorgasbord, but not that confusing to understand as a word in itself. I would probably put ファイト in this category too, but that might just be because it's used so often that the japanese meaning is seared into my brain.
@@kusaboketranslations2163 that's why I don't like the term loan words. They aren't loaned. They aren't owned by the original language anymore. When a language takes a word from another, they regularly change it, and this isn't a bad thing at all (event if it trips up learners)
In that same sense though, the English common use of stoic isn't practicing virtue to achieve a well lived life which is what it meant to the Greeks we got the word from.
i got to eating fish again through Japanese food, and so of course i was exposed to salmon eggs as いくら and it looks so nice, written on a banner, top down, in hiragana.. ..wouldn't really work with икра now would it? from what i read the stuff was pushed on the market post WWII, and to overcome fears of foreignness, vendors opted for the hiragana spelling to make it look more Japanese. then again, a calligraphy version of И would most likely end up looking like い anyway
I always considered kanji to be the Japanese equivalent of learning Greek and Latin roots in English. Turns out I wasn't too far off, since apparently Japan sometimes uses kanji to translate Greek and Latin roots!
Japanese loanwords frustrate me because it always reminds me of my personal perception that if I don't say English words the exact way they pronounce them in Katakana, they just stare at me confused like I just turned into a Tsuchinoko 💀
@@scriptingjapan It's just, I don't know, with English, I learned to piece together words from various degrees of pronunciation clarity, talking to so many people, so I thought Japanese speakers also have their own way of doing that, where everything just clicks in their head. It surprises me just how linguistically rigid they can be, especially to that point.
I have picked on on とびら (don't want to pick the wrong kanji) from a lot of anime and then, to my surprise, I find out that every Japanese speaker instead says ドア! Fantastic video!
Tobira are grand, giant doors, whether physically or metaphorically. Most doors referred to that way in anime are metaphorical - "a door opened to the new future" or such, or big things like palace gates. The reading for "open" is usually different too, hiraku for tobira and aku for doa (開く in both cases). Both tobira and doa typically refer to hinged doors rather than sliding doors, as far as I can tell.
English is consider as Bastardized taking from many languages from its surrounding continent. But when Japanese utilizes English words it's to denote a contemporary feeling, How does that work? Why isn't 日本語 considered as a Bastard language?
If you define "bastard" as taking from other languages extensively, almost languages are bastard languages. I don't use that term though, so I can't answer your question because I don't consider English or Japanese "bastards".
For some reason this video is unwatchable for me. Maybe unwatchable is an exaggeration but for some reason it's really 'laggy', there is plenty of space on the bar but it keeps stopping every couple of seconds. This is not a problem for other youtube videos.
Every language has loan words for words that they already have. The example you gave is also terrible because the two words don't mean the same thing. 牛乳 refers only to cow's milk but ミルク is milk in general and can also refer to goat's milk, for example.
Just like "Gyunyu" includes its bovine origin, I've always found interesting that the Japanese word for "Earth", "Chikyuu", includes its spherical form... Does that implies that its a recent word? How did Japanese people call our planet before they knew it was a sphere? How japanese terraplanist call our planet? :V
@@fangfabio very interesting question that I simply do not know the answer to. It's quite possible that Japanese people didn't really have a word for (or concept of) the globe until the introduction of writing, so no prior word.
Depends on what you consider recent. Chikyuu itself is not a japanese invention but rather a loaning of a Chinese word that was created by an Italian missionary in the late 16th/early 17th century.
Am I already an old geezer in 18 or doesn't it sometimes seems like they really overdo it? Like it doesn't even feel japanese anymore but like some kind of pigeon, or just english written in katakana with Japanese particles. Especially in games or UIs in general, social media. I understand the appeal of "英語はかっこいい" but it still annoys me. やりすぎ
Why not have loanwords for things you already have? It's fun to have more synonyms to play around with. Hell, English is four different languages glued together, for fun.
@@dingusuhum as I noted at the start of the video, CapCut glitched out while I was editing this video and didn't save my changes. Ultimately it was publish with errors or don't publish.
This is a terrible comment. Other languages are not just "funny" versions of other ones, nor does language sharing make a language less of a real one. Do you speak English? Or just funny German? Funny French?
It is, especially the blinking subtitle part. Learning materials aren't supposed to have that. Showing longer sentences with longer period of time each allow brains to absorb information and avoid distraction. Unless this is a Cocomelon-like channel where the objective is attracting brainrot ones, the technique should not be employed. Also, not every people want everything in these 10 minutes, sectioning content would tend to more audiences.
@sarun37823 mate, I'm making these videos in my spare time on my phone. I have no team. I have no funding. I'm just one guy doing the best they can with what little resources they have. Apps glitch. I make mistakes. I don't have scripts. My phone mic isn't perfect. Etc. All things I recognize. But if you think I'm just making brain rot instead "learning materials" you're welcome to watch other channels or make your own videos.
@@scriptingjapan How do you conclude that I said your content is brain rot? If anything, it can be concluded as educational. The reply is revisitable; I won't edit out a single word. Perhaps you don't know about Cocomelon?
All languages have loan words in just about every sense of "loan word," and your video gives some good perspectives on how some of the English loan words differ from the words that already exist in the Japanese language. I think I understand some of the nuance better now. However, my complaint about Japanese is that there is _too much_ usage of loan words. It is abuse. Look at a product package and in the description, you might see the colour listed in multiple languages: the English "black," the Spanish "negro," the French "noir," the German "schwarz," and maybe a few more, and then the Japanese "ブラック" (burakku), which is just the English word "black" in katakana. This is what I'm talking about, and it is simply degradation of language.
The shorts are incredible but the Netflix show gradually started to lose me unfortunately (though I did watch to the end). But I wrote an academic paper on it so I certainly feel passionate about it.
Regarding ミルク and 牛乳 specifically, another weird nuance I've noticed is that while 牛乳 describes default milk in its original state, as soon as the 牛乳 is mixed in with other ingredients, it becomes ミルク. You get ミルクティー, ミルクチョコレート, イチゴミルク, etc. It's almost like 牛乳 is milk (the drink) but ミルク is milk (the ingredient).
he mentioned that gyuunyuu is cow’s milk and miruku is other milk
@unintenuu yes. But if you add cows milk to tea and get milk tea it is not "cows milk tea" it is just "miruku" tea. That's the addition they are making in the nuance of its use
イチゴ牛乳は普通に使うよ。でも抹茶ミルクは抹茶牛乳とは言えない。結構曖昧
some Nihonjin have told me that ミルク is more used when ordering a glass of milk to drink in a restaurant and 牛乳 is more like when you go to buy milk at the store. Like you go buy 牛乳 to take home and you order ミルク to drink. Granted not every place has milk you can order at Japanese places to eat... lol but just for example go to McDonalds Japan website and look at the drink menu it's ミルク but go to a grocery store and get a half gallon of milk and it's always 牛乳 on the container.
Also I can't recall my Japanese wife or any of my former Japanese girlfriends ever ordering 牛乳, I am almost 100% certain they have always used ミルク in some form or fashion whether standalone or in conjunction with another ingredient. I could be wrong, I normally don't order milk to drink when I go out to eat so I am not always paying complete attention.. haha
I remember when I used to go to Sapporo, and I've only seen it in Hokkaido, but can't say for everywhere else in Japan, but never seen it in Tokyo area, Gifu, Nagoya area, Kyoto area, Osaka area, etc.. Anyways in Sapporo and Hokkaido most places had a milk based alcohol drink menu section and if i recall it was ミルク on the menus never 牛乳. Like I honestly don't remember a place my ex girlfriends up in Sapporo and I went to that didn't have a milk based alcohol drink menu, it was as common as a hiighball, sour based menu, a Campari, or cassis based menu, etc that you would typically find on any Japanese eating and drinking place. So my first 6 times to Japan were all in Hokkaido, it wasn't until the last week of my 6th trip that I finally went to Tokyo and I was scratching my head why everyplace we went to didn't have a milk based alcohol drink menu... lol Then I started asking people and everybody was kind of looking at me like I was crazy.. haha
I don't see it that way.
牛乳is specifically cow milk.ミルクis not specifically cow. the reason we Japanese do say ミルクティーinstead of 牛乳茶 is because milk tea came from outside Japan.
牛乳 can very much be an ingredient. 牛乳 and 豆乳are both ミルク.
I always found really interesting Japanese has adopted foreign words for words it already had, like with milk, or ドア vs 扉, or 中心 vs センター, or 机 vs デスク, etc...
Then I realized English has basically the same thing with Latin words and Germanic words. Ghost vs Phantom, Guest vs Visitor, Busy vs Occupied, etc...
Beef vs Cow
Pork vs Swine
This is a false equivalency. English is a language that has developed through the conquests of nations and constant mixing of European languages. Many of these words evolved over time, too. Japanese people deciding to substitute in English words for perfectly fine words that _already exist in Japanese_ is just them pretending to be cool by using words from the most international language in the world.
English has so few Germanic words now (around 30%) that it’s basically a de facto Romance language, even grammar is more Romance than German (for example no cases). Most people would struggle reading a German text, while would get the most out of a French or Spanish one.
@ Scandinavian and Dutch don’t have cases either but they’re fully Germanic just like English is. English grammar is very similar to the Scandinavian languages which may be a result of Danelaw.
@@riccardoscotti4168 That isn't true when it comes to common words. They are mostly Germanic. E.g. "I have a bed" in German "Ich habe ein Bett" is a lot easier to understand for people with no German knowledge than 'J'ai un lit' to someone with no French experience. Also, most people in the US, Canada, Australia, etc. have some experience with either French or Spanish, but not German, which makes the text example biased. Numbers, family, many verbs, colours, etc. are way more similar in German.
They use the words because it sounds クール😎
As I was watching through this video I was thinking of examples of loanwords from French. Fo rnuance difference the French is often fancier, either in connotation or in literal meaning. "Grand" is just the French for "Big", but "Grand" has different, classier connotations. A "mansion" is *literally* a fancier house. And "escargot" used French to get Anglophones to consider snails as a food, like with seaweed vs nori.
French to English is rarely loan words. These are relics of language assimilation when the Normans invaded England, and it’s why there’s a massive overlap in the vocabulary of the two languages. Conversely, there are many English loan words in modern French, because of the omnipresence of American culture globally.
@@maxducoudray they are absolutely loan words they are just so old that people don't call them loan words anymore.
@@pseudonym6387 Restaurant is the defacto name for diners. Petite sounds cute but small/short sounds too literal when describing people.
Just adding a couple more myself.
@@scriptingjapan We'd even borrow a word from the Normans and do it again from the Parisians.
you are a underrated resource in japanese learning!!
keep it up! your videos' impacts are bigger than you think
Absolutely love your channel and videos. One small criticism is the burned in subtitles. Whatever is transcribing your audio makes some mistakes that genuinely make some parts a little hard to follow. For example at 3:51 “or a sober [soba] shop”.
Not trying to be a jerk, I just find myself skipping back several times thinking I have misunderstood or misheard. Given that Japanese is a foreign language to me (most of your viewers?) the subtitles help to follow your really good examples.
@@jamesx7424 I put a little visual note at the start of the video but CapCut kept reverting my subtitles while editing this time. It's a super glitchy app unfortunately. I just had to let some errors go through on this one, I'm sorry that it impacted your experience.
A random encounter with horizontal hyphens in otherwise vertical "Japanese" texts never fails to burn my eyes. I can't fathom why I've never seen any Japanese person/fluent-enough-Japanese-speaker rambling endlessly on this very specific blasphemy of spelling which unfortunately we are subject to see way too often.
Interestingly ミルク is not really used when describing 豆乳, soy milk, even though the word ソイミルク does exist. A Google images search seems to suggest that ソイミルク might be almost exclusively used for foreign products, and 豆乳 is the generic term.
Midwesterners just felt "sukoshi" in the very fiber of our being immediately upon encountering it, it seems like. "Skosh" is in our souls, like "ope". Saying "miruku" aloud, I can see why it got traction. It's got better mouthfeel than in English even? Or maybe that's just me.
Japan as a whole is actually a lot like the upper midwest, just how people are. Like I don't even think Nihonjin realize it because most Nihonjin when traveling to the US rarely come to the upper midwest. Chicago has a pretty decent Nihonjin population, but it is mostly due to either Nihonjin going to school there, or Nihonjin who have had to relocate there for work because there are quite a few Japanese companies who have a presence in the Chicagoland area, and of course the Japanese consulate for the midwest is there too.
Whenever I see the hate on American videos for something an 'american' did, as someone who was born and raised in Wisconsin, my first reaction is always well those people were probably not raised in the upper midwest. Yeah I am biased, but I think anybody that really grew up in a good upper midwest environment would totally understand what I am saying. I also feel because of this, it is why I make friends with Nihonjin so easily here living in Japan, and having had come to Japan overall now for 13 years. We are just raised to be nice, polite, courteous, offer someone to come to your home for a meal even if you just met them, not shy to spark up a friendly conversation with a stranger or give the polite wave, head nod, pass by someone and say good morning. tell the clerk thank you, even after they have already thanked you. When I see videos of gaijin here saying they have a hard time making nihonjin friends in Japan, I also always think they must not be from the upper midwest... lol or another example is when i see videos of gaijin complaining about the work life in Japan, again I think hmm where were you brought up? It just seems like they were brought up in areas where the value of an honest days work equals an honest days pay mindset was never drilled into their minds. Japanese work life isn't hard, it is just what it is that's all. You live in Japan you should just put your best effort in, even back home I had worked for Costco for 10 years before moving to Japan, and I was always promoting to my coworkers at the end of our night merch shift that as long as you can go home after clocking out and you feel you gave your best effort that day, then you can go home feeling good
@@calvinsperberg3714Must be why Nerissa Ravencroft fits so organically with Hololive. The Midwest-Japan relationships are definitely very interesting. Isn't Michigan part of the Midwest as well? (I'm not American sorry). Detroit and the automobiles boom there also reminds me of Japan for some reason (except the deteriorating part)
@@NotSomeJustinWithoutAMoustache yes Michigan is, Detroit it's like Japan's Nagoya Tokai region
This vid reminded me of a time where I learned what an English word meant because the Japanese word for it took the base Latin/Greek meaning and wrote it in Kanji. The word being hippocampus, which in Japanese is 海馬. All this time I didn't consider that the word just meant seahorse
it makes me think of how in the US “anime” refers to a specific type of japanese animation style.
while in japan アニメ is just short for animation and refers to all animated shows.
in the US spongebob is a cartoon and definitely not anime. but in japan spongebob is アニメ
You are my favorite new channel
From my pov as a Chinese, Japanese just swithch to English loanwords from Chinese loanword, and that`s it.
I'm just saying the instance of 牛乳 though
Chinese is gyunyu
Japanese is chichi
English is milk y’know ?
@@austiforn4383 this is an incredibly amusing take but I can't say that you're wrong.
@@scriptingjapan it's average take from people whose native language is Chinese, of course most westerners can't walk in the same shoes.
@@scriptingjapan There's no correct answer, just as Eastern people learning English cannot view the relationships between English, German, and Latin in the same way that native English speakers do.
The fact that i never made the connection between skosh and sukoshi till just now
another rad phenomenon is when a language makes up a loanwords that never actually existed in the language its supposedly borrowed from. I think it's fun that people do that
@@alienfortytwo I love waseieigo.
Really lovely video, one of many that makes me retroactively contextualize experiences I've had in Japan. When I first got here, when I would see a loanword, I deep down thought "that is an English word that is being used here." But for the past year or two, I have recognized they are distinctly Japanese words with their own specific nuance.
@@pikXpixelart if it's being used in Japanese so that Japanese speakers can communicate with Japanese speakers, it's not an English word 💪
In my recent years of learning Japanese I've been watching streams and YT vids where they use more casual and colloquial speech, and I've come to realize just how much English words they use for day-to-day speech. I've been telling my friend who wants to learn Japanese he could probably already hold a convo with a Japanese person if he just learns how to pronounce English in katakana eigo.
@NotSomeJustinWithoutAMoustache they aren't English words, they are Japanese words 😉
@@scriptingjapan I know, I meant to type English *loan words* but accidentally deleted the loaned words part during editing.
i think there's a whole scene in lucky star where they try not to use any loan words for a day and everyone keeps getting surprised when they remember/find out certain things are loan words. it might not have been lucky star, i could be misremembering
If you find it please drop a link!
It would be Nichijo I guess.
I was just thinking about this! Such a great explanation of the topic
5:13 Aren't Japanese restaurants more likely to use ご飯 (gohan)? 米 (kome) is uncooked rice or the rice crop itself. If you're referring to cooked rice, you'd use ご飯 (gohan).
@@achuuuooooosuu yeah my brain skipped
Your editing is top notch, no horsing around and straight to the point, luv it.
When I first started learning Japanese at school years, mobile phones were referred to as 携帯電話(ケータイ). Recently, I saw a video saying that no one uses that term anymore, and people prefer to say スマホ. Of course, this is not directly related to the video’s topic about loanwords when there are native ones, as the difference in definitions between these types of phones does exist. But you explain why the sense of novelty in words and meanings led to the point where no one uses keitai anymore. Why it’s a little surprise for me? In my language (Russian), 'mobile phone' or 'mobile' has been used for general reference for the last 20+ years, and it still continues to be used. As for 'smartphone,' it's too long, and it’s not the main term for a phone in everyday conversation. At least i think so😅
@@PeterProFilm yeah the loan word treadmill moves on and on
マッシュルーム is the common button mushroom _(Agaricus bisporus),_ not just _mushroom_
I noticed many loanwords in english from french as well. I went to a french immersion school from kindergarten(a german loanword btw) to middle school but switched to english for high school. There were some words that I had only heard in an academic context and thus only heard in french, so I was surprised to find that a lot of terms are the same between the languages.
This might be more because of them having the same root words/etymology than being loanwords though.
This channel is a bit of a rad phenomenon if I don’t say so myself.
I never heard of "skosh" before, but I love it! It sounds so at home in colloquial English.
(edit: typo)
I have asked my Japanese friends about this and one reason given other than “I don’t know “ is that the English word is just easier to say .
I had 0 clue uncanny valley came from Japanese, my mind is blown
Me native Japanese learning about Japanese with English
Fun fact:
コーヒーミルク: coffee whitener
コーヒー牛乳: coffee added milk
カフェラテ or カフェオレ: milk added coffee
ミルクティー: milk added tea
ミルク紅茶: milk added tea (rarely used)
牛乳ティー、牛乳紅茶: never saw these
You rock!
Uロック
lol
The 牛乳 to ミルク example was enlightening. I really enjoy your indepth explanations and sourced reasoning, with implemented screenshots. Appreciate the effort, worth a sub!
good video but you're missing a little bit--in, japanese english loanwords are generally used for describing a specific context, so they actually do not have the same meaning.
for your example with rice, if you look at the images you shared you'll notice that ライス almost always refers to rice served on a plate.
Currently happening to my native language too, *Malay language* . (has been for the past 20 years or so)
We have native words, yet we still import many similar-meaning English words, into our vocab. And it is happening at the official, government level too.
Excellent video, very informative! I've studied 10 years and never noticed that "just a skoshe" (spelling?) and "sukoshi" are the same! Very interesting.
I never heard that word "skosh" (?sp) until I moved to Texas nine years ago. I immediately knew it came from "sukoshi," but people looked at me like I was crazy. And yet others in this comment thread are saying that "skosh" came from the upper Midwest. I lived in Minnesota for 16 years and never once heard it until I moved to Texas.
Wes Robertson and Matt Alt starting fantastic Japan-related channels at about the same time, life is beautiful
Like how the English already had "ask", but adopted "demande" from the French to more perfectly express "ask like an asshole".
3:52 'Sober shop' lmao
My favorite loan is ワンタン (Wonton) because the way Chinese writes it is 餛飩，but in Japanese 饂飩 is うどん (Udon) which, in turn, Chinese transliterates as 烏冬 (wūdōng), lit. "black winter".
Being bilingual in Chinese and English, starting to learn Japanese is insanely fascinating.
Wait is wonton really pronounced wantan in Japanese?
And also, they used ラーメン instead of 拉麺 for ramen, which is literally the kanji and the chinese character of the word la mian (the origin of the word itself)
You could use it. It's a valid kanji. But for some reason, they didn't use it.
すごい！ありがとうございます！
It’s not strictly better to have more words. It can interfere with comprehension and it’s simpler to have less words to remember and recognize.
@@Tryceattack this is a common myth. There's no evidence that a language having more words is bad for learning or makes it harder for children to acquire. Generally speaking most languages are filled with words no one uses; once there are a certain amount of words, some naturally fall out of use.
Is my own experience a myth? It may be a cinch for some, but I’d rather not have to remember two versions of a word if possible.
Even on mobile i can't get used to vertical long videos.
good thing nobody asked
This also stems in Japanese from many words change their meaning depending on context. And the loner word is used to convey another context that didn't a traditionally exist in Japanese.
Then sometimes in Japanese you might have a Three or more words that mean virtually the same thing and sometimes I use interchangeably and other times are used only in certain instances because you're trying to convey a certain context.
Myself growing up speaking Japanese. It's second nature, but it's very difficult for Americans to wrap their heads around it.
That's the same Japanese word can be translated multiple ways in English and they think you're lying.
Kome, gohan, raisu, depending on context are interchangeable, and in other context or not.
Like many Japanese, one of my favorite dishes is curry rice or kare raisu.
Pork vs pig. Beef versus cow. Mutton vs sheep.
My main issue with loan words is that after I spent 6 months learning Japanese, I wanted to order "atsui koucha" but they called it "hotto tii" instead. Then I looked like a tool for correcting my parents for ordering "hotto tii" instead of "atsui koucha".
I grew up in the '60's and '70's referring to flip-flops as "zorries" without knowing the Japanese origin of the word. It was not until I saw a subtitled Japanese film where they put straw "zori" on corpses in preparation for a funeral that I realized the truth. The shoes were also called "thongs" back then. I don’t remember hearing them called "flip-flops" until the '80's, presumably to differentiate them from a style of underwear that was just coming into vogue.
@@Xubuntu47 where do you live?? I've never heard that
@@scriptingjapanIn the Pacific Northwest of the US. My Canadian mom used the word; she had Japanese neighbors, so I thought maybe that was the source. However a coworker who grew up in South Seattle confirmed that he'd used the word as a kid as well. Seems like it was common before the '80's at least on the West Coast.
@Xubuntu47 fascinating, thanks for that info
While watching, I'm thinking about how is this evident in the Philippines. Because we've been colonized by Spain and US, their words have been part of our everyday vocabulary even though we have our own equivalent... like berde (verde) = 'luntian' and presidente (president) = 'pangulo'.
The real question is why doesn't Japanese have 'pause' as a loanword. 一時停止 is too damn long.
@@reizayin they do?
コメントの前にポーズすればいいんだ
English has plenty too 🤷♂️
With french norman influence: cow/beef, pig/pork..
Also water, hydro-, aqua-, and so on..
What is frustrating to me about loanwords is that the meaning can change and become even more confusing. I am not super knowledgeable about it's etymology, but ストイック does not mean "stoic" even though that's clearly where the word comes from. In English, stoic means "One who is seemingly indifferent to or unaffected by joy, grief, pleasure or pain". In Japanese, sutoikku means "Someone who is very harsh on themselves". Things like this are very frustrating as a learner of Japanese.
Or something like エピソード. You would think that it should be easy to ask a Japanese person "What episode are you at" since they have the word "episo-do", but turns out that is the wrong word to use when you actually mean episode.
that’s the same thing with a lot of English loan words from French and Latin (at least, i’m sure about French)
I find it the hardest when the loanword has just a slightly different meaning. ストイック would probably fall into that category for me. It's still used in roughly the same contexts as the english word would.
Meanwhile words like バイキング is only confusing in how it came to mean smorgasbord, but not that confusing to understand as a word in itself. I would probably put ファイト in this category too, but that might just be because it's used so often that the japanese meaning is seared into my brain.
@@kusaboketranslations2163 that's why I don't like the term loan words. They aren't loaned. They aren't owned by the original language anymore. When a language takes a word from another, they regularly change it, and this isn't a bad thing at all (event if it trips up learners)
In that same sense though, the English common use of stoic isn't practicing virtue to achieve a well lived life which is what it meant to the Greeks we got the word from.
i got to eating fish again through Japanese food, and so of course i was exposed to salmon eggs as いくら
and it looks so nice, written on a banner, top down, in hiragana..
..wouldn't really work with икра now would it?
from what i read the stuff was pushed on the market post WWII, and to overcome fears of foreignness, vendors opted for the hiragana spelling to make it look more Japanese.
then again, a calligraphy version of И would most likely end up looking like い anyway
I always considered kanji to be the Japanese equivalent of learning Greek and Latin roots in English. Turns out I wasn't too far off, since apparently Japan sometimes uses kanji to translate Greek and Latin roots!
Japanese loanwords frustrate me because it always reminds me of my personal perception that if I don't say English words the exact way they pronounce them in Katakana, they just stare at me confused like I just turned into a Tsuchinoko 💀
I mean, same is true for English. Try calling CARE-EE-OAK-EE karaoke to a non-Japanese speaker.
@@scriptingjapan It's just, I don't know, with English, I learned to piece together words from various degrees of pronunciation clarity, talking to so many people, so I thought Japanese speakers also have their own way of doing that, where everything just clicks in their head. It surprises me just how linguistically rigid they can be, especially to that point.
I wish your examples were on screen longer, and had explanations on them
@@batchampa so do I! Not feasible given that I do all this on my phone.
@@scriptingjapan I'll just have to be quick on the pause button
Japanese has not only English loanwords but MANY Chinese loanwords (most of those Kanji ones)
I have picked on on とびら (don't want to pick the wrong kanji) from a lot of anime and then, to my surprise, I find out that every Japanese speaker instead says ドア!
Fantastic video!
@@muizzsiddique this is (mostly) and example of the meaning difference case: few Japanese buildings now have tobira.
Tobira are grand, giant doors, whether physically or metaphorically. Most doors referred to that way in anime are metaphorical - "a door opened to the new future" or such, or big things like palace gates. The reading for "open" is usually different too, hiraku for tobira and aku for doa (開く in both cases).
Both tobira and doa typically refer to hinged doors rather than sliding doors, as far as I can tell.
English is consider as Bastardized taking from many languages from its surrounding continent. But when Japanese utilizes English words it's to denote a contemporary feeling, How does that work? Why isn't 日本語 considered as a Bastard language?
If you define "bastard" as taking from other languages extensively, almost languages are bastard languages. I don't use that term though, so I can't answer your question because I don't consider English or Japanese "bastards".
青歯 is funny, do they use that in spoken Japanese? Or is it one of those words that are written in kanji but have a katakana furigana?
I've never heard it - it might be used in speech but only by people who... let's say touch less grass than average.
I had no idea a skosh was from sukoshi!
English already has Epicaricacy but foreigners still like to use our Schadenfreude more.
@@buvvins6687 incredible comment
How does 当て字 fit into this mess? Perhaps another video?
@@mudpill ateji don't fit into this mess at all! They are kanji used for sound only to write native Japanese words
@@scriptingjapan Just native words? What about something like 混凝土?
@@mudpill ah sorry yeah I was sleepy when I commented. I should have said non-kango words.
my favourite is フライドポテト, カラフル is cool too, but ボランティア or ベトナム makes me laugh:D
For some reason this video is unwatchable for me. Maybe unwatchable is an exaggeration but for some reason it's really 'laggy', there is plenty of space on the bar but it keeps stopping every couple of seconds. This is not a problem for other youtube videos.
Not sure how to troubleshoot that, maybe contact RUclips?
Every language has loan words for words that they already have. The example you gave is also terrible because the two words don't mean the same thing. 牛乳 refers only to cow's milk but ミルク is milk in general and can also refer to goat's milk, for example.
Okay, but in this particular case, isn't it also that 牛乳 specifically refers to cow's milk, while ミルク has no such nuance?
@@oyoo3323 I said that in the video?
ミルク is pasteurized? Idk.
Just like "Gyunyu" includes its bovine origin, I've always found interesting that the Japanese word for "Earth", "Chikyuu", includes its spherical form... Does that implies that its a recent word? How did Japanese people call our planet before they knew it was a sphere? How japanese terraplanist call our planet? :V
@@fangfabio very interesting question that I simply do not know the answer to. It's quite possible that Japanese people didn't really have a word for (or concept of) the globe until the introduction of writing, so no prior word.
Depends on what you consider recent. Chikyuu itself is not a japanese invention but rather a loaning of a Chinese word that was created by an Italian missionary in the late 16th/early 17th century.
@ayumu_osaka domo! do you know what word did they use before that? :O
@@fangfabio I dont know for certain, but I think the word used before Chikyuu was Konyo (坤輿).
This youtube program is rad 😎
Someone should try giving almond milk to a cow.
@@mynameismarvin I don't see any ethical problem with that.
Am I already an old geezer in 18 or doesn't it sometimes seems like they really overdo it? Like it doesn't even feel japanese anymore but like some kind of pigeon, or just english written in katakana with Japanese particles. Especially in games or UIs in general, social media. I understand the appeal of "英語はかっこいい" but it still annoys me. やりすぎ
@@stranger9633 You're already an old geezer unfortunately. Don't worry though, many old geezers in Japan feel the same way.
Why not have loanwords for things you already have? It's fun to have more synonyms to play around with. Hell, English is four different languages glued together, for fun.
At least I don't learn Icelandic right now hehe he..... 誰か助けてくれー
Kaede (my character) right now: 「おい、何言ってんの？！」
just turn off the tiktok subs, it's atrocious and not needed
@@systerdruid2785 I need some kind of subs, and my primary posting is TikTok. I'll switch to a less obstructive style.
I'm also interested in at what point in language's history was "chichi" switched to "gyuunyuu"
not to be a dick but why are there so many mistakes in the subtitles?
@@dingusuhum as I noted at the start of the video, CapCut glitched out while I was editing this video and didn't save my changes. Ultimately it was publish with errors or don't publish.
Feel like a waste learning Japanese😅...I could just talk English funny🤣
This is a terrible comment. Other languages are not just "funny" versions of other ones, nor does language sharing make a language less of a real one. Do you speak English? Or just funny German? Funny French?
Just fyi, the editing is off-putting. The content is good.
@@Enregardant sorry?
Nah it isn’t off putting sorry
It is, especially the blinking subtitle part. Learning materials aren't supposed to have that.
Showing longer sentences with longer period of time each allow brains to absorb information and avoid distraction.
Unless this is a Cocomelon-like channel where the objective is attracting brainrot ones, the technique should not be employed.
Also, not every people want everything in these 10 minutes, sectioning content would tend to more audiences.
@sarun37823 mate, I'm making these videos in my spare time on my phone. I have no team. I have no funding. I'm just one guy doing the best they can with what little resources they have. Apps glitch. I make mistakes. I don't have scripts. My phone mic isn't perfect. Etc. All things I recognize. But if you think I'm just making brain rot instead "learning materials" you're welcome to watch other channels or make your own videos.
@@scriptingjapan How do you conclude that I said your content is brain rot? If anything, it can be concluded as educational. The reply is revisitable; I won't edit out a single word. Perhaps you don't know about Cocomelon?
Hawk tuah
Lmfao 🤣
That girl suspended
All languages have loan words in just about every sense of "loan word," and your video gives some good perspectives on how some of the English loan words differ from the words that already exist in the Japanese language. I think I understand some of the nuance better now.
However, my complaint about Japanese is that there is _too much_ usage of loan words. It is abuse. Look at a product package and in the description, you might see the colour listed in multiple languages: the English "black," the Spanish "negro," the French "noir," the German "schwarz," and maybe a few more, and then the Japanese "ブラック" (burakku), which is just the English word "black" in katakana. This is what I'm talking about, and it is simply degradation of language.
@@person880 counter point: no it isn't.
@@scriptingjapan Sure.
6:35 Would never expect one of my favorite channels to bring up one of my favorite animes but ! im greatful 🫡
The shorts are incredible but the Netflix show gradually started to lose me unfortunately (though I did watch to the end). But I wrote an academic paper on it so I certainly feel passionate about it.