Wiktionary:Requested entries (Japanese)/List of gairaigo and wasei-eigo terms

This is a selected list of gairaigo, Japanese words originating or based on foreign language (generally Western) terms, including wasei eigo (, Japanese pseudo-Anglicisms). Many derive from Portuguese, due to Portugal's early role in Japanese-Western interaction; from Dutch, due to the Netherlands' relationship with Japan amidst the policy of sakoku during the Edo period; or from French and German, due to France and Germany's cultural and scientific prominence during Japan's modernization in the Meiji period. However, most come from English, perhaps the dominant world language today. Due to the large number of western concepts imported into Japanese culture during modern times, there are thousands of these English borrowings. Japanese vocabulary also includes large numbers of words from Chinese, borrowed at various points throughout history. However, since the Japanese language has such strong historical ties to the Chinese language, these loans are not generally considered gairaigo.

Many loan words are in fact pseudo-borrowings: despite their links to foreign language words, the word forms as used in modern Japanese are not used in the same way in their languages of origin. In fact, many such terms, despite their similarity to the original foreign words, are not easily understood by speakers of the originating languages (e.g. from English left over as a baseball term meaning a hit that goes over the left-fielder's head, rather than uneaten food saved for a later meal; or  from English family computer, which actually refers to the Nintendo Entertainment System).

See the list of Japanese terms mistaken for gairaigo for details of words or terms mistaken for foreign loan words.


 * Note:
 * US = American English
 * UK = British English

Examples
As a complete list of foreign loan words in Japanese would fill a whole dictionary, this list focuses mainly on pseudo-borrowings and commonly-used loan words from languages other than English (which are often mistaken for English words in Japan).