6 Made-in-Japan “English” Expressions You’ll Encounter in Japan
A cursory look at Japanese-made or repurposed English in Japan
Throughout my career, I’ve worked only at Japanese companies. Not surprisingly, I am exposed to a lot of “Japanese English.” After all, as I wrote in a previous article, there’s little need to use “regular English” in Japan.
But in truth, I lied. There is a ton of English in the Japanese workplace… with a catch.
They’re more like Japanese words with English origins.
#1 Renewal
In English, the word renewal is often used within a business context especially in conjunction with contracts, as in “contract renewal.” Not so in Japanese, where it’s used more to mean update or revamp. And yes, the verb is also renewal rather than renew.
Example sentence: 売れ筋ナンバーワンの商品をリニューアします。
We will “renewal” our bestselling product.
Earlier on in my career, I would have winced for saying “renewal” to mean revamp. “Renewal just sounds odd,” I had thought to myself. You renew a contract; you revamp a product. And anyway, renewal is a noun, not a verb!
But the more I heard it, the more normal it started to sound.
