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“Japan is a safety country.”

If you’ve taught English to Japanese students, you’ve probably heard “safety” used this way. But why is this such a common mistake? And why is it so difficult for students to correct?

The root of this problem is loanwords.

What Are Loanwords?

Loanwords are words that were borrowed from other languages. For example, the word for “cheese” in Japanese is chī-zu and the word for “computer” is kon-pyū-tā. As you can imagine, having “cheese” and “computer” in their vocabulary helps Japanese students learn English.

However, many words changed when they became loanwords. For instance, “safety” entered the Japanese language in expressions like “safety belt,” which then led to other similar Japanese-English expressions, like “safety driving” and “safety country.”

So let’s talk about the different types of loanwords, how they affect learners from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan (home to many of our students), and how we should point them out!

Loanwords That Changed in Meaning

If you’ve ever heard a Taiwanese student say, “I’m so high!” you’re witnessing a loanword that gained a new meaning. Your student isn’t saying, “I’m high on drugs.” They simply mean that they’re excited.

Some words have changed so much that they've become unrecognizable. For example, you might have heard a Japanese person say “revenge” when they mean “try again.” Your student might say, “I’m going to revenge my driving exam,” meaning, “I’m going to give it another try!”

Here are some other loanwords your Japanese students might say:

Another loanword that is now used in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan is “fight” or “fighting,” neither of which refer to any sort of physical aggression. Rather, these words are used to wish someone good luck: “You have a test tomorrow? Fighting!”

Loanwords That Were Shortened

Just as English speakers shorten long words like “refrigerator” to “fridge,” speakers of other languages also shorten English loanwords. A famous example is the Japanese word kosupure (“cosplay”), which is a shortened form of “costume play.”

However, many shortened loanwords have become unrecognizable to English speakers. Here are some more examples from Japanese:

Uncommon or Outdated Words

Another type of loanword you may encounter is the kind that is uncommon or outdated in the source language but still used by speakers of other languages.

For instance, you may have heard a Japanese student say that they bought a paso-kon or “personal computer.” In English, we would just say, “I bought a computer,” since it’s obvious that we bought a personal computer (not a giant supercomputer that most of us cannot afford anyway). Yet, the term “personal computer” stuck in Japanese!

Here are some more examples of loanwords that are now uncommon or outdated in English:

False Loanwords

Finally, there are false loanwords that sound like English but aren’t real English words at all.

You may have heard South Korean students say “hand phone” instead of "cell phone" or “mart” instead of "supermarket." Or maybe you've heard a Taiwanese student use “3C” to mean "electronic devices."

These are all terms that don't exist in mainstream English. However, your students won’t know that!

Here are some examples from Japanese:

How to Point Out Loanword Errors

One challenge with correcting loanword mistakes is that students usually believe that these words are mainstream English. So it doesn’t matter how many times we say, “'Safety' is a noun, not an adjective. Say ‘safe country,’ not ‘safety country.'” They won’t get it.

Instead, it’s more helpful to recognize that students may be using a word correctly by their country’s standards of English, but not by the standards of mainstream English. In other words, instead of saying “That isn’t English,” we can say, “That may be correct in Japanese/Korean/Taiwanese English, but will confuse other English speakers.”

For example, if a student says, “I want to revenge my driving exam,” we may not want to immediately say, “‘Revenge’ is incorrect. You mean ‘try again.’” Instead, we can say, “‘Revenge an exam’ is OK in Japanese English, but people outside of Japan won’t understand it. Instead, we should say, ‘I want to take the exam again.’”

👋 That’s it for now!

Hopefully this has given you an idea of the many ways that loanwords affect our students and how to delicately bring up the issue.

Once students realize that every "English" word from their language may not actually be understandable outside of their country, they're likely to think of other potentially tricky words — which should make for an interesting (and possibly amusing!) topic of conversation.