Why so much modern Chinese vocabulary was made in Japan

If you know anything about East Asian history, you would know that the Chinese language was essentially the giving tree for neighboring countries like Japan, Korea, and Vietnam since as early as the first century. In fact, it's estimated that 50% of modern Japanese vocabulary, 60% of modern Korean vocabulary, and a third to 70% of modern Vietnamese vocabulary is based off of Chinese characters, depending on who you ask. However, civilizations rise and fall, and with it, the strength of their languages. As said by Danish linguist Otto Jespersen, loanwords always show a superiority of the nation from whose language they are borrowed, though this superiority may be of many different kinds. While China was the dominant power in the Asia-Pacific region for over a thousand years, the last Chinese dynasty, the Qing Dynasty, which ruled from 1644 to 1911, struggled to maintain authority and order in the empire. Corruption, food shortages, and rebellions were abundant, and China was being threatened by Western forces that wanted to expand their influence and trade. With all the internal strife and Western forces wanting in on Chinese resources, China not modernizing its military was the straw that broke the camel's back. After losing to Great Britain and France in the Opium Wars in the mid-1800s, China had no choice but to cede Hong Kong to Great Britain and open up more ports for Western countries to use. At the same time, Japan was quietly embracing Western models of government, industry, and military. During the major restoration from 1868 to 1912, Japanese scholars translated large amounts of Western works into Japanese. In doing so, they used Chinese characters as building blocks for translation, as Chinese characters had played a strong role in their language for centuries. And now would be a good time to explain these You're probably aware that Chinese is made up of characters, monosyllabic morphemes, each with their own form and meaning. For example, there are monosyllabic characters for all the different natural elements that exist in the world, and their succinctness makes them great to be used as linguistic building blocks. One character describes one element, and using two or more together would start to add complexity to ideas. So they're a great tool to translate pretty much any concept, as long as you use some logic and ingenuity. Back to China, in the late 1800s, as we mentioned, the Chinese empire under the Qing rule was starting to decline due to its failure to modernize its military. In 1895, the Qing dynasty lost to Japan in the First Sino-Japanese War, leading to Japan's annexation of Taiwan, as well as the Qing dynasty losing its stronghold in Korea, which had been a tributary state up until that point. This defeat was a huge blow for China, and Chinese scholars started to brainstorm ways to modernize, helping China keep up with the changing world order. However, instead of learning Western languages and translating Western works into Chinese, Chinese people preferred to read the existing Japanese translations of those works. Chinese people believed that learning Japanese was easier, as much of their writing system was the same. One of the pioneers during this period was a scholar named Liang Qichao, who translated many Japanese translations of Western works into Chinese. However, he and his contemporary Kang Youwei did not want to read all of these works to create a revolution in the country. They simply wanted the Qing Manchu rule to modernize. For example, establishing universities for studies of science and liberal arts, industrializing through manufacturing, and allowing for Chinese people to study abroad. Although these ideas sound pretty reasonable to us now, they were apparently too radical for the conservative ruling elite at the time. Eventually, their attempt at changing the governmental system led to failure. However, in the next decade, the Qing dynasty did allow thousands of scholars to study abroad in Japan. And it was there in Japan that these scholars studied lots of Western ideas of philosophy, social science, life sciences, etc. And they brought these concepts, many of which didn't exist in China at the time, back to China, but using Japanese coinages of those words. Some of these words include 历史 history 哲学 philosophy 积极 positive 手段 manipulation or method. However, it's not just scientific or technical words that Chinese scholars brought back from Japan. Even everyday words from English like romance or romantic was translated into Chinese from Japanese katakana. In Chinese it is 浪漫. In Japanese it is 浪漫chic. According to Chinese scholar Wang Lida, if you peruse 新名詞辞典 新知识 辞典 or any other dictionary published in the 1950s, about 50% of all the words were actually coming from Japanese coinages. Localizing a word from a foreign language usually consists of two different categories, one phonetic translations, or transliterations, second being meaning-based translations, or just regular translations. During this time, because most translations were based on abstract concepts of science, philosophy, economics, Japanese scholars preferred to use meaning-based translations for these words. Thus, words like absolute and relative were translated into 絕對 and 相對. Other examples include objective and subjective, translated into 主觀 and 客觀. More industry-specific terms include things like 動產 and 不動產, the former being movable property, and the latter being immovable property, or real estate. And another quirky example would be 內分泌 and 外分泌, meaning internal secretion and external secretion, something that might be found in biology or life sciences. It'd probably take me over a week for me to read all these words out loud, so I'm just going to put them on the screen and you can pause the video and just read it out yourself. Additionally, words relating to the academic sciences, typically ending in ology in English, were first translated into Japanese and then inserted back into Chinese. Psychology, 心理學, economics, 經濟學, chemistry, 化學, architecture, 建築學, horticulture, 園藝學, etc. etc. In addition to what we can see as direct translations, Japanese also introduced a lot of productive suffixes into modern Chinese. For example, the suffix 化, meaning to turn into, the English original would be eyes. So 現代化, 現代 meaning modern, 化 meaning eyes, 現代化 meaning to modernize, 工業化, 工業 meaning industry, 化 meaning eyes, 工業化 meaning industrialize, 大眾化, 大眾 meaning the masses, the people, 化 meaning eyes, 大眾化 meaning popularize. We also have the suffix 性, designating a specific quality, property, or scope. The English original would be ability. An example here would be 可能性, 可能 meaning possible, 性 meaning ability. So 可能性 meaning possibility, 必然性, 必然 meaning inevitable, 性 meaning ability. So 必然性 meaning inevitability. We also have the suffix 主義 meaning ideology, usually something ism in English. We have 資本主義, 資本 meaning capital, 主義 meaning ism, 資本主義 meaning capitalism, 帝國主義, 帝國 meaning empire, 主義 meaning ism, 帝國主義 meaning imperialism. And last but not least, 共產主義, 共產 meaning shared property, 主義 meaning ism, 共產主義 meaning communism. And yes, we technically did get the word communism from the Japanese. Of course, it would be false to say that all words in modern Chinese relating to science, government, economics are from the Japanese. There are actually a lot of words that became coined during this time that were actually originally Chinese, that were originally found in old Chinese writings, but their meanings have changed since their sabbatical to Japan and back. And some of these words include 經濟. 經濟 was originally used as 經世紀明 meaning politics, and now it means economics. Another example is the word 歷史, originally used in 史記 meaning records of past events or people, and later on as the form 歷史 during the Three Kingdoms era to mean records of decrees and regulations, and now it means history in a much more broader sense. The word 革命. 革命 originally meant the changing of dynasties and governmental rule, and now it means revolution, as in completely upending the existing governmental order. The word 知識. This was originally a terminology found in Buddhist sutras, and now it means knowledge. Additionally, before you get too disappointed at Chinese scholars' lack of agency, there were quite a few scholars in the late 1800s who tried their hand at translating Western concepts into Chinese. Scholars such as Yan Fu translated economics into 計學, literally the study of calculation, while Liang Qichao translated it into 資產學, literally the study of assets or capital. Liang Qichao also translated many other concepts such as philosophy into 知學, meaning the study of knowledge, sociology into 群學, the study of groups, and science into 格致學, 格致 being an old Chinese concept dating way back to the pre-Qing times, and actually the word 格致學 was used as the word for science in the late Qing era. However, because the Japanese off-the-rack translations were both readily available and plentiful, they became the favorite translations of Western concepts in the early 20th century. Because these Japanese translations follow Chinese word form, aka Chinese characters, it's normal to think that many Chinese people would not know that these words were actually from Japan. In fact, being a Chinese person myself, I had no idea that about half of our modern vocabulary relating to economics, government, and science were technically made in Japan. And the exact percentages of how many of these words are from Japan are actually up for debate, because even scholars, you know, they have a difficult time in hindsight trying to figure out which ones are originally Japanese and which ones were Chinese translations. So it gets a little bit bogged down, but most scholars agree on about half as the number. The reason I made this video is because in my recent video about Chinese not having any words, there were a lot of comments where people asked, you know, what about the Japanese coinages of words in Chinese? And I think the answer is pretty clear. I mean, these are Japanese coinages of words that were reinserted back into Chinese, but most Chinese people don't even know that they're Japanese to begin with. So I don't think the fact that they were Japanese really impacts the way that they feel about the wordhood of these words. You know, we just look at an example from earlier, 内分尼 and 外分尼. So the original definition I gave you guys was internal secretion and external secretion, but they could also be translated to endocrine and exocrine. So I'm not that familiar with these words, but as you can see, even in English, there are two-word ways to say it and one-word ways to say it, right? So I think wordhood in general, not just in Chinese, but in any language in the world, it's a very tricky subject and we might not have definitive answers for it. As for the mass amounts of history that was presented at the beginning of this video, I just have to say this is not a history channel. This is a linguistics channel. But in my attempt to understand how and why so much modern Chinese vocabulary is from Japan, I had no choice but to delve into a little historical excursion and tell you guys the true story. And I'm very sorry if some of the historical elements made you uncomfortable. I really did try to minimize the political elements as much as possible, but give you enough to make you understand why China did what it did. So this period of Japanese coinages entering Chinese happened mainly in the late 1800s and early 1900s. And the records are not specific about, you know, when this borrowing stopped happening, but I would say at least in the past couple of decades, China has stopped relying on other people for translations and just use their own translations that they make up themselves for foreign concepts. I know many of you in the comments are going to ask me, what about Taiwan? What about Korea? And as many of you know, Taiwan and Korea were both colonized by Japan in the early 20th century. And as you know, Japanese was instated as the official language. And that meant that local languages were relegated to minor subjects or in some cases forbidden from even being used. And so I think more than the effect that Japan had on Chinese vocabulary, the effect that Japan had on modern Taiwan Mandarin and Korean vocabulary is probably much, much more. Unfortunately, that would be a video for another time. And if you guys watched until now, I just want to say thank you so, so much. Your support means the world to me. If there's any other topic that you want me to cover on this channel, please just leave a comment and I'll try to look at it and, you know, make videos about it in the future. But if you've watched until now, I have to say thank you so much and I'll see you next time.