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A Japanese man is angry with Japan's television company NHK. He is tired of hearing so many English words on TV. Mr Hoji Takahashi, 71, says he is stressed every time he hears an English loanword on NHK. He is taking NHK to court. He wants the TV company to pay him 1.4 million yen ($14,300) for his "mental distress". Mr Takahashi's lawyer told the AFP news agency that Japanese TV is too "Americanised". Takahashi doesn't understand why NHK uses words borrowed from English instead of Japanese words. He said NHK should use Japanese and not loanwords for vocabulary such as "toraburu" (trouble), "risuku" (risk) and "shisutemu" (system). He said this would help protect Japanese culture.
Mr Takahashi started a small group called "The Treat Japanese as Important Association". He started it after he wrote to NHK but got no reply. He said NHK does not care about his opinions. Takahashi said older Japanese people often have problems with the many loanwords on NHK. He said they have trouble understanding what announcers on NHK say. He told reporters: "Young people can probably understand a lot of this stuff, but for older people like myself, I don't know what it means." The Japanese language has thousands of words borrowed from English and other languages. It uses a special alphabet called katakana to write them. It also changes the pronunciation to fit with Japanese phonics.
