Japanese Katakana Words List – Foreign Words

This is a list of katakana words, aka foreign words that have been adopted into Japanese language using the カタカナ alphabet system.

These foreign words are also known as 外来語 (gairaigo). A large majority of them come from English, but there are also many words influenced from Portuguese, French, German, etc.

Many of the words maintain a similar meaning to the original word, but other words take on a completely new meaning in Japanese. These are known as 和製英語 (wasei eigo).