I heard an interesting discussion on NPR today on the stress that is occurring now in Vietnam, partly because people are becoming successful in business. However, they've never had a word for "stress," so they've taken our word and call it "see-TRESS." They do have a word that means "tension in the brain," but that's not the same. Interestingly, the Vietnamese are proud of their new word, "see-TRESS" because it validates their success in business.

This phenomenon also happens a lot with Japanese when it takes English loan words. Japanese lacks the extensive consonant clusters that are a feature of English and so borrowings with consonant clusters are almost always split up with the addition of vowels resulting in extra syllables. I know nothing about Vietnamese but it sounds as if the same thing is happening.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BobHale,

In Japan I could often read some English-derived words in signs, packaging, etc, but I had to sound them out and sometimes make a guess.

ミルク
miruku
milk

コーヒー
ko-hi-
coffee

ゴルフ
gorufu
golf

クイックキャストサービス
kuikku kyasuto sa-bisu
quick customer service

チョコレート
chokore-to
chocolate

ラジオ
rajio
radio

ソフトウェアアップデート
sofutowea appude-to
software update

(the dash - means that the proceding vowel is lengthened)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy,

My favorite is ワイシャツ waishatsu 'dress shirt' from English white shirt. In Japanese you can have red or blue waishatsu, too.

I have some photos of what I think are amusing examples of English-derived Japanese words in Waikiki. My favourite is

Coffee? ホット or アイス?

That is so interesting and shows how societies can affect one another. Surely we have a lot of French words, for example, that have become English words.

quote:

That is so interesting and shows how societies can affect one another. Surely we have a lot of French words, for example, that have become English words.

English is a mongrel language and a mongrel whose mother was of exceptionally easy virture. I have no figures to support it, but I would reckon that English must have accepted, usually without much protest, words from hundreds of different languages.

Far from being a disadvantage, this is, I suggest, one of the reasons for the unparalleled success of English. Adaptation and evolution are prime contributors to the success of most things, both organic and inorganic.