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Gairaigo are Japanese words originating from, or based on, foreign-language, generally Western, terms.These include wasei-eigo (Japanese pseudo-anglicisms).Many of these loanwords derive from Portuguese, due to Portugal's early role in Japanese-Western interaction; Dutch, due to the Netherlands' relationship with Japan amidst the isolationist policy of sakoku during the Edo period; and from ...
Wasei-eigo (和製英語, meaning "Japanese-made English", from "wasei" (Japanese made) and "eigo" (English), in other words, "English words coined in Japan") are Japanese-language expressions that are based on English words, or on parts of English phrases, but do not exist in standard English, or do not have the meanings that they have in standard English.
As with all languages, the Japanese language has evolved to fulfil the contemporary needs of communication. The potential form of verbs is one such example. In Old Japanese and Early Middle Japanese , potential was expressed with the verb ending ゆ ( yu ) , which was also used to express the passive voice ("to be done") and the spontaneous ...
By contrast, in Old Japanese -shiki (〜しき) adjectives (precursors of present i-adjectives ending in -shi-i (〜しい), formerly a different word class) were open, as reflected in words like ita-ita-shi-i (痛々しい, pitiful), from the adjective ita-i (痛い, painful, hurt), and kō-gō-shi-i (神々しい, heavenly, sublime), from the ...
The Japanese language makes use of a system of honorific speech, called keishō (敬称), which includes honorific suffixes and prefixes when talking to, or referring to others in a conversation. Suffixes are often gender-specific at the end of names, while prefixes are attached to the beginning of many nouns.
-pie for words ending in -m: boom (tree) → boompie (little tree)-kie for words ending in -ing: koning (king) → koninkie (little king)-′tjie for words ending in -i, -o, or -u (usually borrowed from other languages): impi → impi′tjie-jie for words ending in -d or -t: hoed (hat) → hoedjie (little hat)
Traditionally these verbs ended in -hu, which is still seen on occasion in historical kana usage, and thus unambiguously ended in h. When godan verbs end with "つ" (tsu), the verb's invariant stem always ends with an "s" rather than a "t". Since the consonant stem terminology focuses on rōmaji, this could lead to conjugation errors.
Sino-Japanese vocabulary, also known as kango (Japanese: 漢語, pronounced, "Han words"), is a subset of Japanese vocabulary that originated in Chinese or was created from elements borrowed from Chinese. Some grammatical structures and sentence patterns can also be identified as Sino-Japanese.