# 和製英語 wasei-eigo



## ohhell

For my class, I have to provide "Abbreviation (reduction? not really acquainted with the linguistic difference between the reduction & abbr) and conversion as a way to create 和製英語 (wasei-eigo) words" presentation. I'm kind of confused with understanding the definition of wasei-eigo. 

For example, if we see 和製英語 as some morphological changes which differentiate the Japanese-made words from the English ones, can we say that: 

The morphological reduction of plurality: オンザロッ*ク* “on the rock*s*” (and not ロックス), レデ*ィー*ファースト “ladi*es *first” (and not レディス), former of which —　in a Japanese dictionary — is not seen as a 和製英語 word, while the latter one is, are both actually 和製英語 or not？
The morphological reduction of part participle: サラ*リー*マン “salari*ed* man" and スクラン*ブル*エッグ “scrambl*ed* egg" are both 和製英語, even though only the former stated as one in a dictionary?
The morphological reduction of Gerund: ハッピーエン*ド* “happy end*ing*” and スペ*ル* “spell*ing*” are both 和製英語, even though only the former stated as one in a dictionary?


Also, interested in the word* ポケモン* which seems to fit my presentation subject (abbr from pocket monster) is not defined as 和製英語 in my dictionary...


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## gengo

ohhell said:


> Also, interested in the word* ポケモン* which seems to fit my presentation subject (abbr from pocket monster) is not defined as 和製英語 in my dictionary...



I agree that ポケモン is not 和製英語, at least as I use that term.  I have always understood 和製英語 to be a word that is etymologically related to English, but has no direct equivalent in English.  An example is ナイター, which means a baseball game that is played at night.  There is no English word "nighter," and we instead say "night game," so ナイター is a word that can be thought of as "English that was made in Japan."

By contrast, ポケモン is just a typical Japanese contraction of two words, where the rule is that you joint the first two かな from each word (ポケット and モンスター).  This practice isn't limited to 外来語:  天丼 (てんどん) is a contraction of 天ぷらどんぶり.  And since "pocket monster" is something from fantasy (doesn't exist in the real world), it's just a newly coined word, albeit one taken from English words.



ohhell said:


> The morphological reduction of part participle: サラ*リー*マン “salari*ed* man" and スクラン*ブル*エッグ “scrambl*ed* egg" are both 和製英語, even though only the former stated as one in a dictionary?



I agree with that dictionary, because サラリーマン does not come from any real English word (we don't say "salaried man"), so it is pure 和製英語.  On the other hand, スクランブルエッグ does come from a real English term, and the only reason the -ed of the English isn't reflected is that it would make the Japanese word needlessly difficult to pronounce, so this is not 和製英語.  There are countless examples of this change in pronunciation.  For instance, "napkin" is translated as ナプキン, but many Japanese people pronounce it as ナ*フ*キン.  The reason may be that it's easier to say that way, or that 布巾 (ふきん) is a real word with a similar meaning.

Therefore, I personally don't consider any of the other words you listed as being 和製英語.  They are just 外来語 fitted to suit Japanese pronunciation.  All languages do this.  In English we pronounce カラオケ (which is indeed 和製英語) as "carry-oky"  and 酒 as "saki," just because most English speakers find them easier to pronounce that way.  That doesn't make those words 英製日本語.


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## ohhell

gengo said:


> I agree that ポケモン is not 和製英語


I see. The problem is that in various sources I've found different interpretations of the term and what is considered to be 和製英語 and not. 

But I went with this 和製英語 definition: 


> Japanese word constructed of elements from one or more English terms


& got the idea that ポケモン was a 和製英語 'cause the contraction was based on the 2 different English words and the final form of the word that doesn't exist in English was created. If it wasn't a popular franchise, the English speakers would never guess it was created from their words. 

Plus, was trying to look up whether it was anywhere referred to as wasei-eigo and found this on _Time_


> The name of Nintendo’s lucrative franchise was created through a process known as wasei eigo.






gengo said:


> サラリーマン does not come from any real English word (we don't say "salaried man"), so it is pure 和製英語.


Completely agree on this one. It's just that I was desperately trying to find any Morphological reductions that were made during the adaptation of the English words that could possibly be referred to as 和製英語 for my specific presentation subject; if it were just for the general 和製英語 words, it wouldn't be so confusing :/ 

In the book _Loanwords in Japanese _by Mark Irwin (attached the screenshot) I've found オンザロック, レディーファースト just as examples of the reduction, but the latter, for some reason, is stated as a wasei in the dictionary. 


What do you think of such words as スト (created from ストライキ, strike), ドッグ (from ホットドッグ, hot-dog), アイス (from アイスクリーム, ice cream), オーバー (from オーバーコート, overcoat), エネトピア  (from エネルギーユートピア, housing development designed with an eye toward energy conservation). 
None of these words are seen as wasei-eigo in my dictionary and I need to find many examples for the "Abbreviation as a way to create 和製英語" and all I found that seem to fit it are: アフレコ (after recording — adding sounds to a soundtrack after a film has been made); ドンマイ (don’t mind — don't worry about it); ゲーセン (game centre — game arcade)


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## gengo

ohhell said:


> The problem is that in various sources I've found different interpretations of the term and what is considered to be 和製英語 and not.



I was only giving my own opinion about what 和製英語 means, and don't mean to imply that what I said is authoritative.  It's just that Japanese now contains tens of thousands of 外来語 (mostly from English), but only relatively few of those are what I would term 和製英語.  I don't include pronunciation changes in the category of 和製英語, because every language makes changes to the pronunciation of foreign loan words.  The categorization of specific words and terms is probably subjective.



ohhell said:


> What do you think of such words as スト (created from ストライキ, strike), ドッグ (from ホットドッグ, hot-dog), アイス (from アイスクリーム, ice cream), オーバー (from オーバーコート, overcoat), エネトピア  (from エネルギーユートピア, housing development designed with an eye toward energy conservation).



My opinion is that of those, only エネトピア is a true 和製英語 because we don't (as far as I know) say "energy utopia" in English.  All the others are just abbreviations of 外来語 that derive from real English words.



ohhell said:


> all I found that seem to fit it are: アフレコ (after recording — adding sounds to a soundtrack after a film has been made); ドンマイ (don’t mind — don't worry about it); ゲーセン (game centre — game arcade)



The first two do seem to me to be 和製英語, but the last one is debatable.  We usually say "video arcade" in English, but "game center" is also used sometimes, so that doesn't really seem to be "made in Japan."

In summary, my definition of 和製英語 is a Japanese word that was coined using English, but which has no direct equivalent in English.  However, since you are in a class, you should follow whatever definition your teacher has given you.

I hope this was of some help to you.


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## ohhell

It did help, thanks for your time!


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## Flaminius

I think Mark Irwin's definition of 和製英語 includes words that are coined in the Japanese speech community and considered English, nonetheless.  Some of them are hard to understand for native English speakers because they don't follow the English morphology.  That would safely tuck under its aegis interesting words like オンザロック, レディーファースト, and ナイター.  These weren't probably around, if it were not for the Japanese language.  Yey!  [I faintly remember, however, hearing "nighter" from an American in the context of a sport game scheduled in the evening.]

It's slightly outside the scope of your thread, *ohhell*, but I'd throw in two examples of not reduction, but of augmentation.  Both cases involve switch of parts of speech.
From "register" (image processing), we have a transitive verb レジストレーションする.
From "travel" (basketball), we have an intransitive verb トラベリングする.


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## gengo

Flaminius said:


> That would safely tuck under its aegis interesting words like オンザロック, レディーファースト, and ナイター.  These weren't probably around, if it were not for the Japanese language.



I can assure you that "on the rocks" and "ladies first" were around for a long time before being incorporated into Japanese.  They are perfectly natural expressions in English.  The fact that their pronunciation changed slightly during their transition is not really important.  Therefore, I fail to see how those two could be considered 和製英語.



Flaminius said:


> I faintly remember, however, hearing "nighter" from an American in the context of a sport game scheduled in the evening.



As a baseball fan (I even work part-time for an MLB baseball team), I can tell you that we don't use "nighter" in this sense, at least not in standard American English (we can never say for certain that nobody says something).  In fact, as I type this, my computer is marking nighter as a misspelling, because that word doesn't exist in English.  Therefore, ナイター is a perfect example of 和製英語.


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## Flaminius

Well, I don't know what sport exactly, but there is a word nighter in English.  As Wikipedia opens its account of night game, it says: A night game, also called a nighter, is a sporting event that takes place, completely or partially, after the local sunset.


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## dojibear

"Nighter" sounds like a normal English word variation ("night"-->"nighter") that anyone can use. These variations are not counted as English words, and are not in dictionaries. For example, someone who knights others is a "knighter". If it is raining heavily, someone might say "It's a soaker." 

It seems likely to me that *ナイター* is a copy of the word "nighter" (even though most US people don't say that). I know that *ー *is sometimes added to express the longer pronunciation of English vowels, and that the "R-colored e" (/ɚ/) of American "nighter" (/ˈnaɪtɚ/) is not part of the Japanese phonetic system.


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