One of the first things you learn as a foreigner in Japan is that people here will assume you’re intimately familiar with every word written in katakana, the writing system used for expressing foreign words, just by being a native speaker of English. Although the majority of foreign-loan words do come from English, many are taken from other languages, like arubaito (part time job, from the German arbeit) and ankeeto (questionnaire, from the French enquete) and the blocks of concentrated curry powder called roux (also French). This assumption that every Western foreigner knows everything associated with America and Europe goes beyond words, too. I was asked by the PTA of the special English school my son used to attend if I thought the International Baccalaureate program would be a good base for students wishing to attend university in the U.S., but I’d never heard of this system as it’s generally found in Europe, which scandalized them. What kind of foreigner was I? Then there was the time I was teaching English to a student, and she informed me that she was a “Soroptimist,” a word I was totally unfamiliar with at the time. (I now know it’s an international volunteer organization for women and girls in 125 countries.)
The German word arubaito describes any part-time employment.
