Strategies of new words formation in Chinese and Japanese in the 21st Century

In the 21st century, globalization has led to the emergence of new objects, concepts, and phenomena, prompting the creation of new words and neologisms. Languages that use logographic writing systems possess a unique tool for recording neologisms, which enables them to coin new words not only through phonetic borrowings but also by creating compounds from meaningful character-morphemes that reflect the essence of the concepts they denote. This article explores the strategies of recording and the methods of forming new words in 21st-century Chinese and Japanese, as well as the relationships between them. Particular attention is given to the potential mutual influence of Chinese and Japanese word-formation processes, considering the presence of neologisms in both languages that share identical or similar logographic compositions. To identify the mechanisms of neologism formation and to determine the differences and intersections between the two languages, a sample of 70 high-frequency English neologisms—documented in the Oxford Dictionary after the year 2000—was compiled. These neologisms were grouped into seven thematic categories. For each English term, corresponding equivalents in Japanese and Chinese were identified and subsequently analyzed through comparative methods. The analysis reveals that Japanese tends to favor phonetic borrowings, whereas Chinese shows a stronger inclination toward calquing and the creation of new logographic compounds. In scientific vocabulary, both languages exhibit parallel word formation, wherein new words are independently coined in each language without direct borrowing from one another. Borrowings of neologisms from Japanese into Chinese are occasionally observed in scientific domains such as physics, chemistry, and medicine. However, borrowings from Chinese into Japanese are virtually nonexistent, aside from a few rare phenomena related to popular culture. Overall, globalization has contributed more to the growing lexical dependence of both languages on English than on each other.