Loanwords related to science


I speak fluent English, Ukrainian and Russian. And I also have experience
learning German and Japanese. As an avid language learner, I've been
reflecting on what the languages have in common, their grammar, vocabulary
etc. And I have noticed an interesting thing: in Japanese there are so many
loanwords related to daily life: ドライブ、キャンプ、シャツ、ゲーム etc. However, when it comes
to scientific terms, the vast majority of them seem to be Japanese words. It's
not the same for, say, English or Russian:

> English: **ophthalmologist** Russian: **офтальмолог** Japanese: **眼科**
>
> English: **cardiology** Russian: **кардиология** Japanese: **循環器科**

My guess is that this may be due to lack of Latin influence on the Japanese
language. Am I right? Are there any other reasons for not so many loanwords
in, for example, medicine?

I don't know much about the history of the Japanese language, and I'd
appreciate your opinions on this particular matter.




It's not entirely clear to me that the majority of Japanese medical and
science terms are `not loanwords.`

A very high percentage of Japanese academic, science, and medical terms are 漢語
(words imported from China). Even the use of kanji is an importation from
China. As naruto helpfully points out quite a few kango actually were made in
Japan and sent back to China. This makes sense when you see China and Japan as
having a somewhat overlapping domain of knowledge on this.

Consequently, I think it might be better to think of it this way, the Western
world's original medical science comes from Greek and Latin medicine and
language. Conversely, the majority of medicine in China, Japan, and Korea
comes from a Chinese medical tradition. My knowledge of world history isn't
good enough to know what other cultures and areas had medical traditions with
large impacts.

Western medicine did make a big impact in the 19th century and one impact of
this was to make it so only practitioners of Western medicine can be called
医者. But many of the main domains and previously known terms and practices
retained their either Chinese origin names or native Japanese names.

Novel techniques and medicines mostly have names in katakana reflecting more
recent foreign origin.

Switching gears to science, at least in English, many chemistry terms actually
come from Arabic such as alkaline, alcohol, chemistry (alchemy) ... But many
common elements come from Germanic roots (Iron, Gold, Copper)

For Japanese, a similar pattern applies. Things people have known for a long
time, Japanese word with a Chinese character. More recent things, imported
Chinese word. Semi-recent things like
[水素](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B0%B4%E7%B4%A0) are directly equivalent
but turned into characters with Hydrogen. Most recent things, same as every
where else: palladium are so recently differentiated and discovered that they
are just katakana
([パラジウム](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%91%E3%83%A9%E3%82%B8%E3%82%A6%E3%83%A0)).




It's not entirely clear to me that the majority of Japanese medical and
science terms are `not loanwords.`

A very high percentage of Japanese academic, science, and medical terms are 漢語
(words imported from China). Even the use of kanji is an importation from
China. As naruto helpfully points out quite a few kango actually were made in
Japan and sent back to China. This makes sense when you see China and Japan as
having a somewhat overlapping domain of knowledge on this.

Consequently, I think it might be better to think of it this way, the Western
world's original medical science comes from Greek and Latin medicine and
language. Conversely, the majority of medicine in China, Japan, and Korea
comes from a Chinese medical tradition. My knowledge of world history isn't
good enough to know what other cultures and areas had medical traditions with
large impacts.

Western medicine did make a big impact in the 19th century and one impact of
this was to make it so only practitioners of Western medicine can be called
医者. But many of the main domains and previously known terms and practices
retained their either Chinese origin names or native Japanese names.

Novel techniques and medicines mostly have names in katakana reflecting more
recent foreign origin.

Switching gears to science, at least in English, many chemistry terms actually
come from Arabic such as alkaline, alcohol, chemistry (alchemy) ... But many
common elements come from Germanic roots (Iron, Gold, Copper)

For Japanese, a similar pattern applies. Things people have known for a long
time, Japanese word with a Chinese character. More recent things, imported
Chinese word. Semi-recent things like
[水素](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B0%B4%E7%B4%A0) are directly equivalent
but turned into characters with Hydrogen. Most recent things, same as every
where else: palladium are so recently differentiated and discovered that they
are just katakana
([パラジウム](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%91%E3%83%A9%E3%82%B8%E3%82%A6%E3%83%A0)).

