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Are the terms "gairaigo" and "loanword" synonymous within the scope of this website?

I've seen people use the term "gairaigo" within questions, answers, or comments; and I considered adding it as a tag but when I noticed we already had a "loanwords" tag I used that instead.

But I'm wondering if there's any possible overlap with subtle distinctions in which case there could be merit in having both. If not, when somebody first uses a "gairaigo" tag we can just make it a tag synonym for "loanwords".

What think ye?

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  • Yeah, I agree, we should add gairaigo as synonyms of loanwords.
    – YOU
    Jun 10, 2011 at 7:10

2 Answers 2

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I concur, both tags should be synonyms. But a separate tag for wasei-eigo can be useful. :)

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  • can you have a hierarchy in the tags? Like wasei-eigo be a child tag of loanwords?
    – Mark Hosang
    Jun 10, 2011 at 15:30
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    @Mark: Currently there is no feature like that in the Stack Exchange system.
    – Tsuyoshi Ito
    Jun 10, 2011 at 15:40
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I agree with YOU; we should not have as a separate tag from . I think that they are just the same notion in Japanese and English, but even if there are some corner cases where one is appropriate and the other is not, their meanings have a very large overlap and it is more useful to have one tag rather than distinguishing the two tags.

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