There is a nice book titled: "Japan's Built-in Lexicon of English-based Loanwords" by Frank Daulton, Multilingual Matters Ltd.

It contains a list of 3177 common loanwords in KATAKANA:



Take these words, put them into your Anki deck, and try to read every KATAKANA word and to recognize the English equivalent.

Bonus: You will increase your Japanese vocabulary with more than 3000 words!

This ALC specialty dictionary is much the same thing, except it's free and has example sentences for every word. Now, I have no idea of it's one of their "good" or "bad" dictionaries, but it seems useful.

I'm sorry. I'm confused. Do you want to learn Japanese or broken English?

mentat_kgs Wrote:I'm sorry. I'm confused. Do you want to learn Japanese or broken English?

By that, are you saying that none of these loan words are used in colliquial speech?

.. and wasn't the original posters intent to practice reading (and maybe writing) katakana?

mentat_kgs Wrote:I'm sorry. I'm confused. Do you want to learn Japanese or broken English?

Because as we all know, you will never, ever encounter loanwords anywhere in the Japanese language.

I don't see why you'd want to study katakana-english on a 1:1 level unless you cannot speak English. When you see them in real life you will understand them then. There are of course words which have a different nuance in Japanese and 和製英語, but you wouldn't get any of that learning by seeing ストライクtrike ストライキtrike.

Jarvik7 Wrote:I don't see why you'd want to study katakana-english on a 1:1 level unless you cannot speak English. When you see them in real life you will understand them then. There are of course words which have a different nuance in Japanese and 和製英語, but you wouldn't get any of that learning by seeing ストライクtrike ストライキtrike.

For God's sake, he was suggesting a way to practice reading Katakana. Reread the original post.

smujohnson Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:I don't see why you'd want to study katakana-english on a 1:1 level unless you cannot speak English. When you see them in real life you will understand them then. There are of course words which have a different nuance in Japanese and 和製英語, but you wouldn't get any of that learning by seeing ストライクtrike ストライキtrike.

For God's sake, he was suggesting a way to practice reading Katakana. Reread the original post.

I think it is a great idea, in part because (apparently unlike Jarvik7) I find katakana words (many of which are derived from English) extremely difficult to decipher, even after carefullly sounding them out. These loanwords ARE Japanese words, just like deja vu and boulevard and dinghy and sushi etc etc are now English words. Japanese and English are equally open-minding about absorbing words from a variety of sources.

Very different from German and French.

Is it really necessary to SRS them? People seem eager to SRS everything lately, despite how close that is to traditional study, which they hate.

Harrow Wrote:

smujohnson Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:I don't see why you'd want to study katakana-english on a 1:1 level unless you cannot speak English. When you see them in real life you will understand them then. There are of course words which have a different nuance in Japanese and 和製英語, but you wouldn't get any of that learning by seeing ストライクtrike ストライキtrike.

For God's sake, he was suggesting a way to practice reading Katakana. Reread the original post.

These loanwords ARE Japanese words, just like deja vu and boulevard and dinghy and sushi etc etc are now English words. Japanese and English are equally open-minding about absorbing words from a variety of sources.

You apparently misunderstood my post. They are from English words, but the ones you'd understand with that list are the ones you'd understand just by encountering them in the wild. There are no definitions there to help learn anything else. 1:1 doesn't work EVER in Japanese, not even with katakana English. To take my previously supplied example.
ストライク vs ストライキ

These are two different words in Japanese, despite both being borrowed from "strike" in English. Seeing that ストライク=strike doesn't tell you anything about the meaning. ストライキ is only for a labour strike, ストライク is for bowling and baseball. There is also the problem that many of the words in that sample are pretty much never used. Someone who studied this from the beginning of their study would end up speaking like a gaijin stereotype off of tv.

As for mr "for gods sake", I don't see why you'd need to practice katakana as some isolated language element. Practice it by seeing it in the wild. If you don't become as proficient with katakana as quickly as you do with hiragana, it doesn't matter. You'll get it over time. Trying to get all your "Japanese stats" to 100% before progressing is a waste of time. It's worth noting that even Japanese people have difficulty reading long strings of katakana at a similar speed to hiragana.

As much as some of these posts have been... harsh, I'm going to agree. At first I thought, wow, that's a good idea. But the more I think about it, the more I agree with Jarvik. Encounter these words in the wild and deal with it then. You can't understand the nuance of the usage of a lot of words without seeing them in context, two good examples I can think of are shock and don't mind.

Why all the hostility people? Does it make your day to come in and throw stones?

mentat_kgs Wrote:I'm sorry. I'm confused. Do you want to learn Japanese or broken English?

That could have been phrased much better- instead it just started a war which wasted everyone's time. If you can't add to the conversation, keep it to yourself. There should be a hide button that the original poster and moderaters can use to hide useless posts.

captal Wrote:two good examples I can think of are shock and don't mind.

And high tension.

My favorite crazy katakana word is オードブル.

JimmySeal Wrote:

captal Wrote:two good examples I can think of are shock and don't mind.

And high tension.

My favorite crazy katakana word is オードブル.

I had to look that up, haha

If I see a really long katakana word while reading, -and- it's in an interesting sentence, I add it to the SRS. The more I see these long winded words (that maybe would've been better off replaced with a Japanese word in the first place?...仕方ないけどね), the easier I can read the medium-sized ones that were perhaps hard to tackle months before. By doing this, I'm practicing the "flow" of English words in Japanese form. If you practice with stuff like デタッチャブル‐スリーブ and can eventually zip right through it, encountering something short like シグナル is a snap. (based on my experience though)

I think if any significant amount of active learning should go toward katakana words, they should be the words that can't be recognized with just English knowledge (or your native language) alone. What about stuff like アンケート that was taken from the French word enquête (questionnaire/survey)? Or ズボン（jupon=pants/trousers)　or コロッケ (croquette). When I first came upon these words, I was completely stumped (whereas, if I read English-based　パンツ I would know right away, and I would also know the writer was talking about "panties" in particular).

Edit: *agreeing with captal* Bickering in the forum is putting a damper on the place. Big-shot egos reserved for using on internet forumth already went outta style you guyth :B

Ugh I hate katakana lone words like リラクス　and テスト　 and other words that there is a perfectly decent Japanese word for, When ever I learn of a particuliarly offensive bastardization from one of my japanese friends I always say 我々の母語を盗みやめろうぜ！

[Katsuo]

Mcjon01 Wrote:This ALC specialty dictionary is much the same thing, except it's free and has example sentences for every word. Now, I have no idea of it's one of their "good" or "bad" dictionaries, but it seems useful.

The above as a Google Spreadsheet.

Machine_Gun_Cat Wrote:Ugh I hate katakana lone words like リラクス　and テスト　 and other words that there is a perfectly decent Japanese word for, When ever I learn of a particuliarly offensive bastardization from one of my japanese friends I always say 我々の母語を盗みやめろうぜ！

I've also always tried to avoid katakana words in my speech. I remember when I first started learning Japanese I asked my teacher what the Japanese word for orange was and was pretty disappointed when all he would tell me was オレンジ色.

Jarvik7 Wrote:

Machine_Gun_Cat Wrote:Ugh I hate katakana lone words like リラクス　and テスト　 and other words that there is a perfectly decent Japanese word for, When ever I learn of a particuliarly offensive bastardization from one of my japanese friends I always say 我々の母語を盗みやめろうぜ！

I've also always tried to avoid katakana words in my speech. I remember when I first started learning Japanese I asked my teacher what the Japanese word for orange was and was pretty disappointed when all he would tell me was オレンジ色.

オレンジ色 disappointed me too!　There's always　橙色 but I've only seen it in literature.

I didn't read every bit of every post so apologies if it has already been pointed out that this book has nothing to do with studying Japanese (not that you can't do what you want with it).

The book is Daulton's PhD thesis dissertation. When he was doing his PhD program, specializing in vocabulary, he decided to pursue the idea that Japanese students' knowledge of English loanwords could be used to lessen their English vocabulary learning burden. It's an interesting idea but one that poses more problems than it solves, in my opinion, and I think it is unlikely it is going to become a widely used method. Still, he got a dissertation out of it.

I have a problem reading katakana. In fact I hate it so much I think that it shouldn't even exist. I devoid myself off all possible study related to katakana and just "put up with it" when i have to.

If anything I think this is a waste of time. Japanese is hard enough as it is dude, I suggest focusing on more important (yes challenge me here if you want) aspects of the language.

Isn't unnecessary use of 外来語 frowned upon?
I hope so because I'd feel embarrassed using words like ピンク...

Yes it is. Imagine yourself speaking japanese words when you are speaking English.

"Ow, yes I love 魚. Could 君 pass me the bowl?"

PS: I don't regret posting that flamebait. It was a very pertinent flamebait.

harhol Wrote:Isn't unnecessary use of 外来語 frowned upon?
I hope so because I'd feel embarrassed using words like ピンク...

ピンク is the normally used word for pink, much like オレンジ is the normal word for orange. You'd be looked at strangely if you used something native like 桃色 in normal speech. Sometimes you have to live with using katakana words.

How often are ピンク and オレンジ likely to show up in written sources like novels, manga, newspapers & video games? Is it simply a case of semantic preference or are words like 桃色 genuinely becoming obsolete? Or is it just a speech thing? Because the way I speak in English is hugely different from the way I write, and I think that applies to most people.

10x more often, definitely not a speech only thing.
But 桃色 does show up regularly. It is far from obsolete.