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LANGUAGE  |  BILINGUAL

 When does one’s native language stop beingnative?BY MARK SCHREIBER

SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES

 AUG 25, 2013 ARTICLE HISTORYPRINT SHARE  A 71-year-old man in Gifu Prefecture

made headlines recently when he attempted to initiate a lawsuit against

 broadcaster NHK. Through its excessive use of foreign derived words, the

man claimed, NHK had caused him精神的苦痛 (seishinteki kutsū,

psychological pain). He demanded ¥1.41 million in慰謝料 (isharyō,

damages).

The local court refused to hear the case. But Nikkan Gendai newspaper (July 

5) rose to the man’s defense, saying その気持ち、よく分かる (sono kimochi,

yoku wakaru, that feeling is well understood), adding政治もビジネスも、今や

カタカナ語だらけ (seiji mo bijinesu mo ima ya katakana-go darake, now 

more than ever, politics and business are full of katakana loanwords).

だらけ(darake) is a useful descriptive suffix implying, negatively, that

something is full of, or crawling with, whatever.

The term カタカナ語 (katakana-go) is used alternatively with外来語

(gairaigo, words that come from outside, i.e., of foreign origin), but

differentiates such words specifically as being written using the katakana

syllabary, as opposed to borrowings from Chinese written in kanji.

Nikkan Gendai’s writer recalls that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, in his first-term inaugural speech back in 2006, had used such awkward expressions as

イノベーションの創造 (inobēshon no sōzō, creation of innovation) and テレワー

ク人口の倍増 (t erewāku jinkō no baizō, doubling the number of teleworkers,

i.e., telecommuters). These terms, said the writer, resulted in多くの国民がチ

ンプンカンプンだった (ōku no kokumin ga chinpun-kanpun datta, came across

as gibberish to many citizens). チンプンカンプン (chinpun-kanpun, gibberish)

is of indeterminate origin, although its close resemblance to the Mandarin

Chinese phrase聽不懂,看不懂 ting bu dong, kan bu dong, (literally “hear-

not-understand, see-not-understand”) has not escaped notice.

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 While Abe appears to be making greater efforts to reduce use of katakana-go,

plenty of other public figures continue to sprinkle their speech with

unfamiliar word imports. The article singled out Keio University professor

and economic pundit Heizo Takenaka as particularly notorious, citing such

examples as新たなフロンティアを作り出す (arata na furontia wo tsukuri dasu,

to carve out new frontiers);多様なリスクテイク (tayō na risuku teiku, diverserisk taking) and営農者をスティミュレイトするのか (einōsha wo sutimyureito

suru no ka, will this stimulate agribusiness operators?).

 All three of the above, the article points out, have perfectly good ways to

express the same thing using Japanese. Frontiers is開拓地 (kaitakuchi ); risk 

taking is危険な受け入れ (kiken na ukeire); and stimulate is刺激する (shigeki 

suru).

Kenji Uchida of the Hanashikata Kenkyujo (Way of Speaking Institute)

advises when making business presentations,先ずはできるだけ日本語に直して

使うこと ( Mazu wa dekirudake nihongo ni naoshite tsukau koto, the first

thing is to revise it to use Japanese to the greatest extent possible). He added,

カタカナ語を使ったら、＜すなわち＞や＜つまり＞で意味を説明するのもマナーで

す ( Katakana-go wo tsukattara, “sunawachi” ya “tsumari” de imi wo

setsumei suru no mo manā desu, If katakana-go are to be used, it is good

manners to follow them with sunawachi or tsumari [both of which mean "in

other words"] and explain their meaning).

To demonstrate how bad things have become, Nikkan Gendai points to such

extreme cases asシルバーエイジの、アメニティーライフをサポートします (shirubā

eiji no, amenitī raifu wo sapōto shimasu, to support an amenity-filled

lifestyle for [people of] “silver age”).

Returning to the lawsuit, it occurred to me that the 71-year-old litigant, as a

product of the postwar education system, would have been exposed to a huge

number of foreign words during his lifetime. Take 1989, the year he turned

47, and also the year the Asahi Shimbun published a book titled カタカナ仕事

(katakana shigoto, katakana occupations) devoted entirely to occupations

 whose names were written in katakana. They included リフォーマー (reformer,a person who does clothing alterations); メーキャッパー (mēkyappā, make

upper or makeup artist); ヒーブ (hību or HEIB, an acronym for home

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economist in business); フードスタイリスト ( fūdosutairisuto, food stylist);グリー

ンコーディネーター (gurīn kōdinētā, green coordinator or horticulturalist); イ

ベントプランナー (ibento purannā, event planner); and PA ミキサー ( PA mikisā,

a person who controls the audio for the public address system at concerts and

other performances). With examples like the above, I wonder: why did he

 wait until now to sue someone for all those years of “suffering”?