Japanese words of Dutch origin started to develop when the
Dutch East India Company
The United East India Company ( nl, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the VOC) was a chartered company established on the 20th March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies into the first joint-stock ...
initiated trading in Japan from the
factory
A factory, manufacturing plant or a production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. T ...
of
Hirado
is a city located in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan. The part historically named Hirado is located on Hirado Island. With recent mergers, the city's boundaries have expanded, and Hirado now occupies parts of the main island of Kyushu. The component ...
in 1609. In 1640, the Dutch were transferred to
Dejima
, in the 17th century also called Tsukishima ( 築島, "built island"), was an artificial island off Nagasaki, Japan that served as a trading post for the Portuguese (1570–1639) and subsequently the Dutch (1641–1854). For 220 years, i ...
, and from then on until 1854 remained the only Westerners allowed access to Japan, during Japan's ''
sakoku
was the isolationist foreign policy of the Japanese Tokugawa shogunate under which, for a period of 265 years during the Edo period (from 1603 to 1868), relations and trade between Japan and other countries were severely limited, and nearly a ...
'' seclusion period.
Numerous exchanges occurred, leading to a branch of Western learning in Japan known as ''
rangaku
''Rangaku'' (Kyūjitai: /Shinjitai: , literally "Dutch learning", and by extension "Western learning") is a body of knowledge developed by Japan through its contacts with the Dutch enclave of Dejima, which allowed Japan to keep abreast of Weste ...
'' (蘭学), or "Dutch learning", where the in ''rangaku'' comes from ''Oranda'', the Japanese word for
Holland
Holland is a geographical regionG. Geerts & H. Heestermans, 1981, ''Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal. Deel I'', Van Dale Lexicografie, Utrecht, p 1105 and former province on the western coast of the Netherlands. From the 10th to the 16th ...
; ''gaku'' (学) is of Sino-Japanese origin and means "learning".
In the process, a number of terms were adopted from Dutch into the Japanese language. At one point, some 3,000 words are thought to have been used, especially in the areas of technical and scientific vocabulary.
About 160 such words of Dutch origin remain in use today in standard Japanese.
See also
*
Gairaigo
is Japanese for "loan word", and indicates a transcription into Japanese. In particular, the word usually refers to a Japanese word of foreign origin that was not borrowed in ancient times from Old or Middle Chinese (especially Literary Chinese), ...
*
List of gairaigo and wasei-eigo terms
''Gairaigo'' are Japanese words originating from, or based on, foreign-language (generally Western) terms. These include '' wasei-eigo'' (Japanese pseudo-Anglicisms). Many of these loanwords derive from Portuguese, due to Portugal's early role i ...
*
Japanese words of Portuguese origin
Many Japanese words of Portuguese origin entered the Japanese language when Portuguese Jesuit priests introduced Christian ideas, Western science, technology and new products to the Japanese during the Muromachi period (15th and 16th centuries).
...
References
Further reading
*
PDF - Originally in ''
Lingua
Lingua (Latin, 'tongue') may refer to:
* ''Lingua'' (journal), a peer-reviewed academic journal of general linguistics
* ''Lingua'' (sculpture), by Jim Sanborn
* ''Lingua'' (play), a 17th-century play attributed to Thomas Tomkis
* Project Lingu ...
'' 12 (1963): pp. 341–88.
External links
Which Japanese words originate from Dutch?
{{Japanese language
Japanese Words Of Dutch Origin
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People ...
Japanese Dutch
Linguistics lists
Words of Dutch origin
Dutch language in Asia