The Japanese words can have their origins divided into 3 called wago, kango, and gairaigo. Being wago the native words of Japan, kango the native words from China, and gairaigo the words of foreign origin. In this article, we will talk a little about these words.
More than half of the Japanese language is made up of foreign words, with about 49% from China, 18% from other countries, and only 33% from Old Japan. Even though the language distanced itself from Chinese, many things were adapted, transforming Japanese into what it is today.
The native language of Japan is called Yamato Kotoba because of the period in which it was developed. It was during the long Yamato Period (250-710) that the Japanese language evolved with influence from China and Korea.
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WAGO [和語] - Words of Japanese origin
Wago are words of Japanese origin, that is, the yamato kotoba [大和言葉]. Generally, they are words that have the KUN reading of an ideogram. Apart from words specially created for Japanese, most of the time, they have no similarities with other languages.
The words wago usually have 3 or more syllables, make up most of the verbs that are not suru [する] and the adjectives ending in i [い]. The words Yamato Kotoba or wago are often written with a mixture of hiragana and kanji.
When a word composed of 2 kanji has an ON (Chinese) reading and a KUN (Japanese) reading, that word can be considered a wago.
KANGO [漢語] - Words of Chinese origin
The Chinese language is very present in the Japanese language with its ideograms called kanji [漢字] which literally means Chinese characters. The kango [漢語] in turn are words of Chinese origin used in Japanese. Kango can also be called Sino-Japanese words.
A kango word does not always correspond to a Chinese word; they were just adapted or originated from China. These Japanese-invented words are called wasei-kango and can have different meanings or be a false cognate.
The words kango are usually read with the leitura chinesa (on yomi). Verbs in the suru form [する] are often of Chinese origin, na-type adjectives [な], and words that are generally short, without the presence of hiragana, tend to be kango.
Numbers in the Japanese language are often pronounced with the ON reading being a kango [ichi, ni, san]; only in some cases is the wago used for counting [hitotsu, futatsu, mitsu].
GAIRAIGO [外来語] - Foreign-origin words
All the words used in Japan of foreign origin are written in katakana. They can originate from English, Portuguese, French, and other languages. Every day that es, Japan acquires more foreign-origin words in its vocabulary, making the average of 18% in reality greater.
Gairaigo it literally means borrowed words, and unlike Chinese, it did not influence ancient Japanese and its development. These words made their way into Japanese due to new things that emerged during the westernization of the country.
In English there are also thousands of foreign words such as hotdog, hamburger, milkshake, fitness, outdoor, internet, notebook, and the like. In Japanese, this is at an even higher level.
There are even verbs that have been derived from gairaigo, both in the forma suru [する] and in the normal form.
I hope this article has helped you to understand a little about wago, kango and gairaigo. If you liked it share and leave your comments.
