This difference in translation equivalency likely extends to other nonetymologically related, different-script languages in which cognates are all loanwords (e.g., Korean–English). Notably, we reveal for the first time that Japanese–English cognates are “special,” in the sense that they are usually translated using one English term (e.g., コール /kooru/ is always translated as “call”), but the English word is translated into a greater variety of Japanese words. Bilinguals also translated these words in both directions (L1–L2 and L2–L1), providing a measure of translation equivalency.
We show that the degree of cross-linguistic overlap varies, such that words can be more or less “cognate,” in terms of their phonological and semantic overlap.
In the present study, Japanese (first language L1)–English (second language L2) bilinguals rated 193 Japanese–English word pairs, including cognates and noncognates, in terms of phonological and semantic similarity. Formal and semantic overlap across languages plays an important role in bilingual language processing systems.
