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Is there a term that covers both wasei eigo ("Japanese-made English") and gairaigo (words from foreign languages)? Can you call them カタカナ語?

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    「カタカナ語」とか「横文字」とかですかね・・・?
    – chocolate
    Dec 19, 2015 at 6:34
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    @choco Would you consider posting that as an answer? :-)
    – user1478
    Dec 19, 2015 at 9:16

2 Answers 2

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Wikipedia「外来語」によると、

外来語とは、日本語における借用語のうち、漢語とそれ以前の借用語を除いたものである。おもに西洋諸言語からの借用であり、 洋語とも呼ばれる。また、カタカナで表記することが多いことからカタカナ語 、横書きで表記する言葉として日本に入ってきたことから横文字とも呼ばれる。

とあるので、「外来語」は「洋語」「カタカナ語」「横文字」とも呼ばれるようです。「和製英語」もこのように呼ばれるかどうかは書かれていませんが、少なくとも「カタカナ語」「横文字」は、「外来語」「和製英語(または和製外来語)」を指して使われていると思います。

 

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First, wasei eigo should be viewed as a subcategory of eigo-gairaigo, i.e. gairaigo derived from English.

So, the pattern should look as follows

  • wasei eigoeigo-gairaigogairaigo

Gairaigo are words taken from foreign languages in general, and eigo-gairaigo are words derived from English; lastly wasei eigo is literally English made in Japan (i.e. words created in Japanese resembling English words).

Both wasei eigo and gairaigo have their specific usages. Maybe you could refer to both of them as "katakana-eigo", since both use the katakana script and both are mainly taken from English. (Check Miller, 1997: 124)

More generally, there is a term called wasei gairaigo (Miller, 1997: 127). It is Japanese made from words in other languages (not necessarily only English). For example テーマソング, where テーマ comes from Dutch Thema and ソング from English song.

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    Hello and welcome. I found parts of your post difficult to understand, so I partly rewrote it. You can edit the post to rollback the changes if I misunderstood anything.
    – Earthliŋ
    Apr 7, 2021 at 16:49
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    Thank you for correcting my grammar, and your words are the same as I want to talk about. I am not native English and my grammar is not that good, but I am now doing research about wasei eigo and I have urged to answer this question with all my knowledge about wasei eigo things.
    – Kisyuune
    Apr 7, 2021 at 17:45

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