What is the breakdown of countries where loan words originate?


Is there any general idea of what percentage of loan words come from which
languages? I always thought the majority of them came from English, but I keep
seeing more and more that originated in Germany and Portugal.




[This](http://daijirin.dual-d.net/extra/gairaigo.html) puts English derived
words at something like 80% of foreign origin words (this would exclude
漢語{かんご}). It also has some lists of words separated by origin (leaving out
English-derived words).

Let's assume for a moment that this list is in some way representative of non-
English derived katakana loanwords. A rough calculation suggests that the most
common origin is French (~26%), followed by German (~20%), Portuguese (~11%),
Dutch (~9%), Latin (~9%), Italian (~8%), and Russian (~7%), Korean (~5%).

This list also marks the period at which words were introduced. What if we
only include words marked as Meiji period or earlier? That cuts the list down
to less than half size. Unsurprisingly, Portuguese and Dutch feature heavily:

Portuguese (~25%), Dutch (~20%), Korean (~12%), French (~11%), German (~11%),
Ainu (~6%), Greek (~5%).

I've included the words listed for Korean and Ainu in the statistics although
I would think that this word list isn't at all reflective of the actual
relationship between Japanese and these languages. For the European languages,
however, Portuguese and Dutch early on and words from French and German
becoming more prominent later makes perfect sense from a historical
perspective.




[This](http://daijirin.dual-d.net/extra/gairaigo.html) puts English derived
words at something like 80% of foreign origin words (this would exclude
漢語{かんご}). It also has some lists of words separated by origin (leaving out
English-derived words).

Let's assume for a moment that this list is in some way representative of non-
English derived katakana loanwords. A rough calculation suggests that the most
common origin is French (~26%), followed by German (~20%), Portuguese (~11%),
Dutch (~9%), Latin (~9%), Italian (~8%), and Russian (~7%), Korean (~5%).

This list also marks the period at which words were introduced. What if we
only include words marked as Meiji period or earlier? That cuts the list down
to less than half size. Unsurprisingly, Portuguese and Dutch feature heavily:

Portuguese (~25%), Dutch (~20%), Korean (~12%), French (~11%), German (~11%),
Ainu (~6%), Greek (~5%).

I've included the words listed for Korean and Ainu in the statistics although
I would think that this word list isn't at all reflective of the actual
relationship between Japanese and these languages. For the European languages,
however, Portuguese and Dutch early on and words from French and German
becoming more prominent later makes perfect sense from a historical
perspective.

