How many Japanese words in English are there? For sure, only a tiny number compared to from French (29% of all English words) or Latin (29%) or Germanic languages (26%). But there are a few, and collecting them is a somewhat geeky hobby of mine.
Of course, there are words everyone recognizes as Japanese, like judo or karaoke, or tsunami. But there are also a few incognito imports – words that lost their Japanese-ness long ago. Tycoon is one, from the word taikun (king).
“Honcho”: Spanish or Japanese?
Or how about honcho, as in “head honcho”? It sounds a bit Spanish, as if you might hear it in a movie about the American West. But it’s actually from the Japanese word hancho (team leader) and came into English during the American occupation.
Emoji surprise
Even some relatively recent imports aren’t necessarily associated with Japan. Did you know that any similarity between emoji and the English word “emotion” is completely coincidental? It is a Japanese word that means “picture character”.
Priest, monk or “bonze”?
Then, there are obscure and obsolete Japanese words, mainly of interest to translators with too much time on their hands. I’ve got a soft spot for the word skosh, which means “a tiny bit” and comes from sukoshi (a little).
A while back, I translated a book written by a Buddhist monk. In fact, he was a priest, but somehow that didn’t sound right in English.
I desperately wanted to use the hoary old word bonze, which covers both priests and monks. (It comes from bozu, literally shaved head.) Sadly, next to no one knows the word now.
Then there are hybrid words: chimera-like terms in which two languages are fused together.
For example, moxibustion is a compound of moxa (mugwort) and combustion. It’s a traditional medicine that involves burning died mugwort on the skin. (I’ve heard it’s not as painful as it sounds.)
The martial art invented by suffragettes
But my favourite of all hybrid words, if not all Japanese words in English, is suffrajitsu (suffragette jiujitsu), a martial art deftly wielded by suffragettes in the early twentieth century.
In a snit or sunete-iru?
Other words have taken a roundabout route into English. Hikikomori is a literal Japanese translation of “social withdrawal”, but the Japanese word is now commonly used in English.
Cosplay is another one. It started as English “costume play”, went into Japanese, then came back again.
Lastly, there are words with only a tantalising hint of Japanese-ness. The other day, I came across the American slang term “in a snit”. It means “in a sulk” and the etymology is unknown, perhaps Germanic. But there’s some similarity between snit and sunete-iru (Japanese for sulking), especially if you say the latter quickly. A coincidence?
Could the word have originated with Japanese immigrants in the US? We may never know. But that makes it all the more intriguing!
