Japan's Built-in Lexicon of English-based Loanwords

By (author) Dr. Frank E. Daulton

Publication date:

06 December 2007

Publisher

Multilingual Matters

Dimensions:

210x148mm
6x8"

ISBN-13: 9781847690302

Throughout the world, the mother tongue fundamentally affects second language acquisition. Japanese contains thousands of loanwords, many based on the most useful types of English vocabulary. This book examines gairaigo -- Western loanwords in Japanese -- and its effect on L2 English acquisition. The first part introduces Japanese lexical borrowing. The second part resolves the “paradox of cognates” and clarifies the effect of gairaigo on English acquisition. The third part assesses the loanword cognates in Japanese that correspond to high-frequency and academic English. The fourth part focuses on barriers to utilizing this L1 resource. The epilogue presents general principles and suggestions for using gairaigo in teaching, and the appendix features useful lists of English/Japanese cognates. There are important pedagogic implications for wherever language contact has occurred.

Acknowledgements

Preface

PART 1: Japan’s Importation of English

1. The Assimilation of English into Japanese - A Historical and Linguistic Overview

2. Today’s Generation of Gairaigo

PART 2: Gairaigo and Language Acquisition

3. Resolving the Paradox of Cognates

4. The Effect of Loanwords in Japanese on the Learning of English

PART 3: The Built-in Lexicons

5. Common Loanword Cognates for High-frequency and Academic English

6. Quantifying the Overlap and Quality of Japanese/English Cognates

PART 4: Exploiting Japanese Loanword Cognates

7. Barriers to Accessing Cognates

8. Extending Word Knowledge Within Word Families

Epilogue – New Horizons

References

This book is a valuable contribution to SLA research. Apart from the obvious target of the book, SLA researchers and teachers anywhere in the world, it will be of particular interest to the Japanese community and to Westerners interested in Japanese language and culture. It is not easy to write a book appealing to audiences as disparate as this, but Daulton has managed to do this very well. He writes clearly and lucidly and makes good use of his teaching experience in Japan.