Tuttle New Dictionary of Loanwords in Japanese: A User's Guide to Gairaigo (Tuttle Language Library) (Paperback)

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Product Description

A comprehensive compilation of Japanese words of foreign origin covering business and everyday words.

Language Notes

Text: English

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Charles E. Tuttle Co.; 1st edition (August 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804818886
• ISBN-13: 978-0804818889
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 4.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,719,567 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Go to the furonto of your class with this book, February 12, 2001

By	Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

Ha! Don't know what "Furonto" means? Well, that's the problem with Japanese loan-words (Gairaigo means just that, borrowed words from foreign sources.) The Japanese alphabet is syllabic, so each consonant has a vowel sound to go with it. (ta, ti, tu, te, toh, ma,mi, mu, me, moh, etc, not "mmmm") So when the Japanese borrow a word, they give it their own pronunciation using these syllables, and herein lies the problem. If you don't know what "basi-baru" is, you'll be out of the ball game (baseball is translated as basi-baru into Japanese.) Furonto by the way is FRONT and means the front desk of a hotel.

If you DO learn the Gairaigo loan words, your vocabulary in Japanese can soar immediately. In fact, with the right words, you can get by on very little actual real Japanese and survive a week or more in Tokyo. And you'll also be able to understand many Japanese English speakers who may be substituting Gairaigo words for more correct English pronunciation.

Since Japanese is a very ancient language, it had to borrow words from English to cover modern technical subjects, and the Gairaigo pronunciation is essential to being able to communicate in business as a large number of words you will need to know are these loan-words given the Japanese sound. (How did English manage to get the technical words into the vocabulary? They are made up out of fake Latin or Greek, using the Greco-Latin roots that are part of our language heritage. Or stolen directly from French, German, Tagalog...English is flexible!)