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Anime is an an abbreviation of animation transliterated into Japanese and then back into English (It could also be argued that it is a loan word, but for the sake of my point here we don't need to discuss this).

  • how do we classify English words that have been transliterated into another language and then transliterated back into English?

(Perhaps this phoenomonon doesn't even exist, like I imagine it does.)

Mou某
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    I am not sure that *Anime* is a perfect example of what you mean: c. 1985, Japanese for "animation," a term that seems to have arisen in the 1970s, apparently based on French animé "animated, lively, roused," *from the same root as English animate (adj.)*. Probably taken into Japanese from a phrase such as dessin animé "cartoon," literally "animated design," with the adjective abstracted or mistaken, due to its position, as a noun. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=anime+&searchmode=none –  Nov 16 '15 at 11:27
  • @Josh: that supports this answer here... perhaps it should not be so downvoted? Why is anime not spelt phonetically? – herisson Nov 16 '15 at 11:45
  • The question has not been downvoted as far as I can see., –  Nov 16 '15 at 12:05
  • @Josh61: I was talking about Ricky's answer. – herisson Nov 16 '15 at 12:44
  • See also: [linguistics.se] – Kris Nov 16 '15 at 12:44
  • Please show some homework – Kris Nov 16 '15 at 12:45
  • I think you'd call it "yet-another-needless-word-for-an-obscure-concept-that-no-one-really-cares-about". – Hot Licks Nov 16 '15 at 14:35
  • @HotLicks how do you spell that? – Mou某 Nov 16 '15 at 14:36
  • Are you thinking of something like baikingu, which is the transliteration of viking into Japanese. In Japan, the word was adopted for buffet, and now baikingu is sometimes used in English to mean brunch. – D Krueger Nov 16 '15 at 14:49
  • @DKrueger great. Exactly. – Mou某 Nov 16 '15 at 15:15

1 Answers1

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Perhaps reborrowing:

(linguistics) A word taken back from another language, or the process involved in this. Such words may have changed in meaning or form.

The Wikipedia article for the term has examples.

There are also more examples in this question: Foreign words reborrowed back into English

ahiijny
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