日本の方々、日本語、もっと自慢してほしいと思うですが　part 4 One of the things you often hear japanese people say, when you ask them to use the correct japanese word, is.. いや、それはもう日本語になっている。。'no, this word has already become a japanese word', as if the word had already been officially adopted by the Ministry of Education. Unlike France, England and many other countries (I assume), Japan does not have any official department or academy responsible for monitoring the situation, or, officially accepting new words into the Japanese language and publishing them.. though it is must be becoming obvious that such a mechanism is badly needed. Presently, for the most part, TV and radio is doing that job, in a rampant and irresponsible way. The only guideline seems to be, 'if it can be written in katakana, its japanese'.(which means, any word in the world can become japanese as soon as it has been repeated by a minimum of 50 people and/or 2 people on tv or the radio.) People who say 'this word has already become a japanese word' assume that 'everyone' likes to use the english word instead of the japanese word. That is not the case. I recently saw results of a survey of over 1000 people, and even widely heard words such as manifesto, director, collaboration, sport etc were seen as 'established japanese words' by only 30 percent of the people surveyed. So for most english words used in japanese, it would be more accurate to say それは日本語になっているわけじゃないけど一部の日本人に使われている英語です。'Its not a japanese word, it is an english word used by some japanese people'. Sadly, the young, impressionable japanese kids are being exposed to so many english words in japanese, that over time, they will not be able to write, use or even remember the japanese word. With some japanese words, I am seeing this happen with high school students that I teach. This is a glaring contradiction for a country which otherwise has a deep affection for its own unique and sophisticated culture.