Many Japanese words of Portuguese origin entered the Japanese language when Portuguese Jesuit priests introduced Christian ideas, Western science, technology and new products to the Japanese during the Muromachi period (15th and 16th centuries).
Contents
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to reach Japan and the first to establish direct trade between Japan and Europe, in 1542. During the 16th and 17th century, Portuguese Jesuits had undertaken a great work of Catechism, that ended only with religious persecution in the early Edo period (Tokugawa Shogunate). The Portuguese were the first to translate Japanese to a Western language, in the Nippo Jisho dictionary (日葡辞書, literally the "Japanese-Portuguese Dictionary") or "Vocabulario da Lingoa de Iapam" compiled by Portuguese Jesuit João Rodrigues, and published in Nagasaki in 1603, who also wrote a grammar "Arte da Lingoa de Iapam" (日本大文典, nihon daibunten). The dictionary of Japanese-Portuguese explained 32,000 Japanese words translated into Portuguese. Most of these words refer to the products and customs that first came to Japan via the Portuguese traders.
List of loanwords
Many of the first words which were introduced and entered the Japanese language from Portuguese and Dutch are written in kanji or hiragana, rather than katakana, which is the more common way to write loanwords in Japanese in modern times. Kanji versions of the words are ateji, characters that are "fitted" or "applied" to the words by the Japanese, based on either the pronunciation or the meaning of the word.
The † indicates the word is archaic and no longer in use.
Arigatō
It is often suggested that the Japanese word arigatō derives from the Portuguese obrigado, both of which mean "Thank you", but evidence clearly indicates purely Japanese origin. The Japanese phrase arigatō gozaimasu is a polite form of arigatō. This is a form of an adjective, arigatai, for which written records exist dating back to the Man'yōshū, well before Japanese contact with Portugal.
The full derivation is arigatō, the “u” sound change of arigataku < arigataku, the attributive form of arigatai, < arigatai < arigatashi < ari + katashi. Ari is a verb meaning "to be" and katashi is an adjective meaning "difficult". The original meaning of "arigatashi" was "difficult to be", i.e. that the listener's generosity or behavior is "rare" and thus "special".