早川 勇

As many as four hundred words have been borrowed into English from Japanese, most of which have their doubtless etymologies. There are, however, nine dubious words which are presumed to be borrowed from the Japanese language. They are bonze, soy (soya), mebos, gingko (ginkgo), funny, ramanas, rumaki, sharawaggi (sharawadgi) and hobo. Bonze, soy (soya), mebosu, and gingko (ginkgo) are definitely the words of Japanese origin, but they were indirectly borrowed into the English language. That is to say, they were borrowed from Japanese through Spanish or Portuguese or Dutch to English. The other five words are very difficult to ascertain their etymology.