Mr Takahashi, who is a member of a campaign group supporting the Japanese language, highlighted words such as "toraburu" (trouble), "risuku" (risk) and "shisutemu" (system) in NHK's news and entertainment programmes.

is it high value?

14.000$ should be peanuts for a national broadcaster

First time ive heard of this, but it seems pretty ridiculous.

It's quite hard to understand this if you're an English native speaker, our language is the one doing the bullying most of the time, talk to someone whose mother tongue is a minority language and they can speak to you at length about English/French/whatever killing their language slowly word by word.

I'm german ... Language should be used to get your point across and not to preserve cultural heritage or whatever.

I think the point of the (journalistically very badly written) story has been missed, as has also its direct relevance to go.

I'm certain Mr Takahashi realises that a huge proportion of his native language is borrowed from Chinese. This is taught at school. He is not jibbing at borrowing per se, or worrying like Gaelic speakers that his native language is under threat of extinction, or agitating like Scots speakers for his native language to get a fair share of the limelight. He is simply objecting to NHK's response to a very strong trend that is making it hard for him and his ilk (the vast majority) to understand basic things like the news.

This trend (long standing) is for Japanese people to throw in, at a vey high rate, English words that are unnecessary in that a perfectly good native equivalent exists, and sometimes these English words are even mispronounced and misunderstood. More to the point, they are not in the dictionaries which ordinary Japanese people own and consult in much, much higher proportions than western people seem to. The special relevance of NHK is that, like the BBC and likewise a public, national body, it has a specific role as a guardian/arbiter of the national language. E.g. it keeps and publishes a dictionary of the acceptable accents/stresses for contentious words (as, for us, controvErsy or contrOversy). Mr Takahashi is saying that NHK is falling down on its obligations. He may be wrong but his stance is far from ridiculous.

As to the trend and its baleful influences, it seems to have various underlying causes. It is not limited to young people aping Amerian pop culture or trying to appear 'cool', although no doubt that's a big part of it. It happens in technical works and legal works, too. It is normal, for example, to see 'porimaa' and 'juugoutai' used in the same document for 'polymer'. A patent has the status of a legal document, where you'd expect language to be important, yet I saw one this week where 'otosaamaru' popped up out of the blue, undefined. I'm not sure what Mr Takahashi would make of that word (authothermal) unless he was a chemical engineer. He might, however, understand a word that has become ensconced from English, but would you understand it as an English person (gooruin - even telling you it's from goal-in probably won't help, yet you will see this wod quite often in go texts).

The relevance to go is that too many westerners indulge in the same egregious habit when they pepper their talk with kifu, goban, moku and the like just to appear 'cool' or because they ar too lazy to settle on an English equivalent.

I would argue from my German experience taking roots (for new things, concepts etc.) from another language is a much smaller problem than messing up the grammar by not integrating the new roots. The problem here are less the kids, but more the educated and half-educated who insist on Greek and Latin plurals while rejecting "ugly anglicisms" etc. The purists are partly responsible for the problem they try to solve, the language would cope much better with new roots without them. With less rigidity in language, many new roots would be unnecessary or could easily substituted - but the purists usually disapprove of "ugly innovations" just as much.

Yet, ironically, the notion that cultural heritage should not be preserved at all is uniquely German.

The problem here are less the kids, but more the educated and half-educated who insist on Greek and Latin plurals while rejecting "ugly anglicisms" etc.

Language should be used to get your point across and not to preserve cultural heritage or whatever.

Your language is possibly one of the the most important parts of your cultural heritage. There's a (relatively modern) saying in Irish, "Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam" A country without a language, a country without a soul.

Is there historical evidence of countries where no language was spoken?

To be fair, Boidhre, English spent centuries taking words from other languages. P*ss and sh*t used to be normal words for bodily functions until the Normans invaded and gave us urinate and defecate, making the earlier words vulgar.

Tír gan teanga would imply a country without a language of its own. I'd read it that way in English as well.

Your language is possibly one of the the most important parts of your cultural heritage. There's a (relatively modern) saying in Irish, "Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam" A country without a language, a country without a soul.