Language Matters | ‘Boomerang word’ katsu, a Japanese borrowing of the English cutlet, among 2024 Oxford English Dictionary new entries
- When Western dishes were adapted for local tastes in Japan’s Meiji era, they were given names borrowed from English, such as ‘katsuretsu’, meaning cutlet
- Shortened to katsu and seen in the names of dishes such as tonkatsu, the word has now been reabsorbed into English in a 2024 Oxford English Dictionary update
The Oxford English Dictionary’s March 2024 update included a delectable 23 words of Japanese origin. More than half are food-related, including donburi, karaage, katsu, okonomiyaki, onigiri, takoyaki, tonkatsu, tonkotsu and yakiniku.
This is unsurprising, given the continuing impact globally of Japan’s soft power through cuisine (and popular culture), with the rise in Japanese restaurants and availability of Japanese ingredients.
As a dish, katsu (カツ•) is a piece of meat, seafood or vegetable, coated with flour, egg and panko breadcrumbs, and (double) deep-fried and served cut into strips. Its origins – in the Meiji period’s adoption of foreign ideas, including adapting Western dishes to create yōshoku “Western food” – lie in the Japanese execution, in the 1890s, of a European meat cutlet dish.
As a word, katsu charmingly illustrates language contact dynamics.
It is clipped from katsuretsu, which is a borrowing of the English “cutlet” (itself coming from the French côtelette). Its pronunciation was modified to the phonotactics – rules governing permissible combinations of speech sounds – of the adopting language.
Japanese syllables comprise a vowel and a possible preceding consonant; and the only consonant occurring after the vowel is /n/.
