Jieun Kiaer

Hybrid English words in Korean and Japanese: a strange brew or an asset for global English?

Abstract This article discusses English-origin words used in Japan and Korea, which are either imported from English or coined in Japanese/Korean. Many imported English words develop different meanings in Korean/Japanese, while coined words have unique meanings within those languages. Although English-origin words are called loanwords, the diversity of genesis requires a new terminology to better describe their nature: (i) first-generation English words; (ii) second-generation English words; (iii) global English words. This article aims: (i) to show how first-generation English words are reborn as local currency by developing new dimensions of meaning; (ii) to demonstrate how second-generation words are made, and become global English words, earning both local and global value; (iii) to rethink the impact of English as lingua franca on global word making. Finally, it argues that hybrid English words originating in Japanese/Korean are not a strange locally used brew, but a valuable asset for the future of global English.

Issues in defining/extracting collocations in Japanese and Korean: Empirical implications for building a collocation database

Collocations in Japanese and Korean have been studied extensively based on statistical tools. The criteria for collocations in these languages, however, have not been fully established in the literature, and it is not obvious whether all statistically significant combinations of words could be regarded as collocations. In this article, we point out empirical problems in extracting collocations in Japanese and Korean, and provide a standard for identifying collocations (to be separated from “free combination” and “idiom”) in these languages. We concentrate on the discussion of empirical aspects of collocation research, rather than the statistical analyses of collocational patterns. As a preliminary to developing a database for Japanese-Korean contrastive work on collocations, the present study focuses on ten “Chinese-words” (漢語). We show that (i) the co-occurring verbs for eight Chinese-words in Korean all carry over to Japanese (but not vice versa); (ii) in the other two cases, Korean exhibits co-occurring verbs not found in Japanese; (iii) language-specific patterns of verb co-occurring are also observed in some instances. Overall, it is indicated that a much wider variety of co-occurring verbs are found in Japanese than in Korean.