What did English borrow from Japanese?

The English Language has many loan words from many languages, but we don’t care about those other languages except Japanese right? We all (I hope) know about the cool words like “ninja”, “anime”, “karate” and “samurai” just to name a few. But what about the non Japanese enthusiasts among us did they know that words like “Tsunami”, “Soy”, “Tofu”, and “Kamikaze” are all of Japanese origin?

kusunoki_masashige_statue
A perfect example of a true Samurai Kusunoki Masashige

If you ask me all these words look cooler when writing in their native style, but it’s cool to know little facts like these. View even more loan words from the Japanese language over at Dailywritingtips.com.

5 thoughts on “What did English borrow from Japanese?

  1. @ David, they borrowed lots of words, write them differently and pronounce them with their own word sounds.

    @ Volt…very true, pronunciation is a big barrier

  2. It’s not like they could help it. Their phonetic system is pretty different from ours. We’d mangle their language too since we have different rules for pronunciation.

    Truer samurai: Kensei Takezou.

  3. @ Volt, Just realizing the Heroes related snippet in your comment ^_^

    @ Leon…true, it’s always interesting to hear some Japanese pronunciations for borrowed words

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