Learners’ strategies for transliterating English loanwords into Katakana

Post-World War II, the Japanese language has experienced massive infl uxes of foreign words and expressions into its lexicon, known as “loanwords” or borrowings. Th ese lexical items are commonly written in Japanese using katakana symbols. Transliterating these words into katakana accurately is a primary source of diffi culty for foreign learners of Japanese. Previous studies in the fi eld of learners’ transliteration of foreign loanwords have focused mainly on error analysis and no formal study has investigated the basis for learners’ methods of transliteration.