AsiaFile

What foreign words are most recognized in Japan??

A recent survey gives you a sense of the Japanese mood, the Kyoto newswire reports:

“Stress” is the most recognized and frequently used loanword in Japan, a survey on the Japanese language by the Cultural Affairs Agency showed Thursday.

In the nationwide survey conducted in March, to which around 2,000 people responded, the agency asked respondents whether they understood the meaning of 60 loanwords, if they had seen or heard the words, and how often they had used them.

In the survey, 98.5 percent of the respondents said they had either seen or heard the word “stress,” prompting an agency official to comment that it was a “reflection of the current state of Japanese society, in which many people feel stressed.”