High-frequency English-based Loanword Cognates for EFL in Japan

doi:10.65961/AJELT-2010-1-004

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Asian Journal of English Language Teaching ›› 2010, Vol. 20 ›› Issue (1) : 65-80. DOI: 10.65961/AJELT-2010-1-004

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High-frequency English-based Loanword Cognates for EFL in Japan

Frank E. DAULTON

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Abstract

This article examines the loanwords in Japanese that are based on high- frequency English vocabulary, and it assesses their quality as cognates in EFL. The first part shows that members of around half of the high-frequency word families of the British National Corpus have become commonly known loan- words in Japanese. Next the author evaluates certain aspects of semantic simi- larity (i.e., semantic type; dictionary definitions) and formal similarity (i.e., shortening) that are highly salient in language transfer and easily assessed, as well as other limitations on loanword usage (e.g., being a bound morpheme). The results suggest that this loanword-based cognate resource is not only large but of good quality. The article concludes by discussing some implications and directions for future research.

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Frank E. DAULTON. (2010). High-frequency English-based Loanword Cognates for EFL in Japan.Asian Journal of English Language Teaching , 20(1): 65-80. https://doi.org/10.65961/AJELT-2010-1-004

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