Sino-Japanese Vocabulary

Sino-Japanese Vocabulary

Sino-Japanese, or Kango (漢語) in Japanese, refers to that portion of the Japanese vocabulary that originated in the Chinese language or has been created from elements borrowed from Chinese. Some grammatical or sentence patterns can also be identified with Sino-Japanese. Sino-Japanese vocabulary is referred to in Japanese as kango (漢語), meaning 'Chinese words'. Kango is one of three broad categories into which the Japanese vocabulary is divided. The others are native Japanese vocabulary (ja:和語 wago) and borrowings from mainly Western languages 外来語 (gairaigo). Approximately 60% of the words contained in a modern Japanese dictionary is estimated to consist of kango, and it forms about 18% of words used in speech, as measured by the National Institute for Japanese Language in its study of language use in NHK broadcasts from April to June, 1989.