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And don’t forget all the Sino-Japanese loanwords (kango, 漢語), which has made up a huge chunk of the vocabulary for centuries, long before the current influx of English loanwords.


It's interesting that whereas old kango are Chinese loanwords, many newer ones are made-up words, and some even got backported into the Chinese language!


The newer words were usually made up to explain Western philosophical and scientific concepts. A lot of this work was done in an academic context, so whoever came up with an appropriate translation first got to be cited by everyone else.




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