作者：王梓寒
【Abstract】English borrows a lot of words from other languages. Chinese and Japanese loanwords in English have a deep cultural and historical background. This paper makes a comparative analysis of Chinese and Japanese loanwords in English based on the OED， concluding their amounts， naturalization process，the characteristics of word formation and so forth.
【Key words】Chinese loanwords; Japaneseloanwords; Comparison; the OED
【作者簡介】王梓寒，北京大学外国语学院。
Ⅰ. Introduction
It is a common phenomenon that languages borrow words from each other. With the development of society and economy and the increasing frequency of cultural exchanges， this kind of borrowing becomes increasingly common. English is considered to be the most hybridized tongue， and borrowing has recently become the major way of making new English words. It is estimated that English borrowings constitute up to 80 percent of the modern English vocabulary. From the communication between the east and the west，， a large number of English borrowing words entered Eastern Asian languages. In turn， there has been also many Eastern Asian languages loanwords entering English. China and Japan are both main countries in the East Asian cultural circle， and much of Japanese words come from Chinese， so we can find many similarities of Chinese and Japanese. However， the different features of Chineseborrowings and Japaneseborrowings in English can also be found. Since China has surpassed Japan and become the second-biggest economy at the end of 2010， the study has become more meaningful， for it will be of great help to linguistic and cultural communication.Therefore，this paper discusses the theme which former studies have hardly referred to， comparing the Englishborrowings from Japan and China， concluding their amounts， frequency of use， word-classes， subjects， the way of borrowing， and changes in pronounce.
Ⅱ. Literature Review
In the study of Japanese loanwords， Canon’s Japanese series （1981， 1982， 1984， 1994， 1995） has compiled a detailed corpus for us. From his in-depth and comprehensive research，Japanese borrowing words has been described according to their geographical， historical， variant forms and other phonological or graphemic considerations， word formation and other grammatical information， and the words’ places in general international English.In his latest study I can find， he showed us words usingwholly English elements but truly Japanese borrowings， which have filled a semantic gap in the existing English lexicon.From a six-month survey of two popular American magazines， Christopher P. Carman retrieved 29 contemporary borrowing of Japanese loanwords and analyzed them in terms of category， morphology， and the ability of coming into common English in 1991.Based on the Oxford dictionary， Schun Doi （2014） studied the naturalization process of Japanese foreign words.
