Paper short abstract:

We conducted a questionnaire survey regarding "the expressions of taste" of native speakers of three Asian languages (Thai, Chinese, and Korean) who share a common food culture. how is taste expressed in Asian languages?Is there commonality between the three languages in terms of the sense of taste?

Paper long abstract:

It has been identified that a characteristic of Japanese is the overwhelmingly large number of texture expressions such as onomatopoeic words, especially "saku-saku" and "puri-puri." According to Hayakawa (2006), Japanese has 445 such words, while French has 226 and Finnish has 71; in other words, in Japanese, synesthetic expressions of "tactile → taste," which express a taste using a tactile sense, are frequently used. Based on these characteristics of Japanese, in this presentation, we conducted a questionnaire survey regarding "the expressions of taste" of native speakers of three Asian languages (Thai, Chinese, and Korean) who share a common food culture. Based on the results, the following points were verified. 1．Verification of diversity: In Japanese, expressions of "tactile → taste" are often used, but how is taste expressed in Asian languages? 2．Verification of commonality: Is there commonality between the three languages in terms of the sense of taste? To examine the above, we conducted a questionnaire survey for native speakers of each language. Sixty native speakers of each language were asked to freely write about the foods in the list of 150 foods that could be expressed in their language. As a result, for example, 1,423 kinds of taste expressions were obtained in Chinese. A classification of these expressions using the Japanese taste words classification table led to the following finding: in addition to "tactile → taste" expressions such as "hard and soft" expressions, "smell → taste" expressions such as "aromatic" expressions turned out to be heavily used. Furthermore, the obtained results were compared with those in Japanese, and the characteristics of Japanese taste expressions were clarified. The results of this research can be used in the field of Japanese language education, allowing one to objectively view the perspective of things that have entered into each language.