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Is wasei-eigo or wasei-kango looked down upon by Japanese language purists (as
opposed to English or Chinese purists!) as informal, inauthentic, incorrect or
the like?
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-08-17T08:40:11.897
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2011-12-04T15:50:53.850
2011-08-18T04:15:50.313
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loanwords wasei-eigo
Are wasei-eigo and wasei-kango looked down upon?
I think most people don't even know whether a word is wasei-eigo. Just to give
you a sense, there are plenty of people who think `パン`, `バイト`, and `アベック` come
from English. I think most won't care if they find that out (which they do
because sometimes the TV discusses this. For most people it's just another
trivia). Just think about how popular ルー大柴 was ;)

I'm sure there are "purists" who somehow look down on wasei-eigo, but you can
find extremists for everything. It's certainly no where common.

I heard some teachers argue that the use of wasei-eigo is detrimental to
learning English, but that's not "looking down" IMO.
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2011-08-17T10:41:40.993
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I agree with Enno Shioji that wasei-eigo is looked down upon by some people
just as anything is looked down upon by someone. I just want to add that in
some cases, the standard way to express some notion is by using wasei-eigo,
and avoiding wasei-eigo is impossible.

For example, baseball terminology in Japanese is full of wasei-eigo:
[フォアボール](http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/dsearch?p=%E3%83%95%E3%82%A9%E3%82%A2%E3%83%9C%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB&stype=1&dtype=0&dname=0ss)
(base on balls),
[デッドボール](http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/dsearch?p=%E3%83%87%E3%83%83%E3%83%89%E3%83%9C%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB&stype=1&dtype=0&dname=0ss)
(hit by pitch),
[タッチアウト](http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/dsearch?p=%E3%82%BF%E3%83%83%E3%83%81%E3%82%A2%E3%82%A6%E3%83%88&stype=1&dtype=0&dname=0ss)
(tag out),
[ランニングホームラン](http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/dsearch?p=%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3%E3%83%8B%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B0%E3%83%9B%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A0%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3&stype=1&dtype=0&dname=0na)
(inside-the-park home run), and so on. If someone tries to avoid wasei-eigo
and replaces, say, ランニングホームラン with “インサイドパークホームラン” or “インサイドザパークホームラン,” the
word would mean nothing to most Japanese speakers.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-08-23T01:25:40.060
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I think they look down on loanwords which replace the local words which were
in normal usage. I don't think think they'd have anything against words like
パン or バス (the vehicle one). Rather it's words like バス (the bathtub. 風呂) or
マイカー (自分の車. 我が車? 我車?). It makes you want to exclaim "Why the heck are you
using such fancy words when there is already a word to describe that? You want
to look ナウい huh?"

If one is too exposed to such words to the extent it causes repugnance, it
leads to extremism, rejecting even loanwords with no viable replacements,
where they will create the replacement using local words. Thus, 「外来語」言い換え提案 (
_Gairaigo Iikae Teian_ ) was born. Ooohhh, I'm so gonna get flak from them for
labeling them extremists!
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2011-08-25T07:13:08.467
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I look down on non-Japanese native people learning Japanese who think that,
whenever they don't know how to say something in Japanese, they can transcribe
the English word in katakana and will work. Sometimes it may work, but they
should not rely on that.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-11-29T19:28:37.207
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2011-12-02T16:29:37.553
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