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Most gairaigo are derived from English; others come from French and German, among others. Gairaigo, while making Japanese easier to learn for foreign students in some cases, can also cause problems due to independent semantic progression. For example, sutobu from English "stove" does not mean a cooking appliance as many Americans would expect, but rather a space heater; the Japanese meaning is derived from the British meaning of "a heat-producing device". The Japanese term for a cooking stove is another gairaigo term, renji, from English "range"—a gas stove is a gasurenji. Additionally, Japanese combine words in ways that are uncommon in English. As an example, left over is a baseball term for a hit that goes over the left-fielder's head, rather than food uneaten at the end of the meal.

In written Japanese, gairaigo are almost exclusively written in katakana, but not always. Some commonly used loanwords can also be written in hiragana, e.g. tabako (たばこ) = tobacco.

Some gairaigo are shortened forms of the original foreign language word. For example, depāto (デパート) = department store. Portmanteaus, such as wāpuro (ワープロ) for "word processor", are common. Karaoke, a combination of the Japanese word kara and the clipped form oke of the English loanword "orchestra", is a portmanteau that has entered the English language. Ordinarily, the Japanese take the first part of a foreign word, but from the English words "flannel" and "blanket" they took the second syllables, to form the gairaigo neru and ketto.

Some gairaigo words have been reborrowed into their original source languages, particularly in the jargon of fans of Japanese entertainment. For example, anime is gairaigo derived from the word " animationThis animation moves at 10 frames per second. This animation moves at 2 frames per second. At this rate, the individual frames should be discernable. Animation refers to the process in which each frame of a film or movie is produced individually, whether", but has been reborrowed into English with the meaning of "animation from Japan". Similarly, puroresu derives from " professional wrestlingProfessional wrestling is a form of performance entertainment where the participants engage in simulated sporting matches. In its purported rules and competitions, it apes the convention of sport. Originating as such, in the days of travelling carnival sh", and has been adopted by English-speaking wrestling fans as a term for the style of pro wrestling performed in Japan.

1 Common examples of gairaigo

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GairaigoGairaigo is Japanese for " loan word" or "borrowed word," and indicates a transliteration (or "transvocalization") into Japanese. In particular, the word usually refers to a modern Japanese word of foreign origin that was not borrowed from Chinese. Most g