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The sentence comes from a video about why Japanese language has so many pronouns.

日本語代名詞の特徴として他の言葉からの転用が多いということが挙げられます

The translation for this from the same video is:

"We can infer that personal pronouns in Japanese differ from those of other languages in that they change very often"

So, what I can't understand is this: 他の言葉からの転用が多い : Seeing the translation, I guess 言葉 means 言語 here, right? so, does it mean something like:

「日本語代名詞の特徴として他の言語と比べて転用が多い」?

at least that's what I see.

Chocolate
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Tv2
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    I don’t think 言葉 means 言語 here. It might make more sense to read it as 単語. – aguijonazo Nov 08 '22 at 11:51
  • If it's a publicly available video, can you link it? – Yusuke Matsubara Nov 08 '22 at 12:41
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    Some say Japanese has NO personal pronouns, and I agree. – aguijonazo Nov 08 '22 at 12:55
  • @aguijonazo then what would you call 私、貴方、俺、僕、君 and such? – jarmanso7 Nov 08 '22 at 14:11
  • @jarmanso7 - They are syntactically no different from ordinary nouns, unlike pronouns in European languages. They are definitely not substitutes (代) for nouns. 呼称名詞 might be good enough a name. – aguijonazo Nov 08 '22 at 14:20
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    `他の言葉からの転用が多い` `differ from those of other languages in that they change very often` <- この英訳めっちゃ間違ってません？ – Chocolate Nov 08 '22 at 15:03
  • I asked because on reading aguijonazo's comment I got curious about why some may argue that 私、貴方、俺、僕、君 are not personal pronouns. For sure there must be some reasoning behind it (i.e. for one, they are not sintactically different from nouns, for two, they do not substitute nouns) that makes them somewhat different to pronouns in other languages. I am not convinced by this reasoning, but that's okay. For example, some pronouns in Spanish at least are the same as nouns syntactically (él, ella, etc.) – jarmanso7 Nov 08 '22 at 15:05
  • @jarmanso7 - Fair enough. But pronouns like *él* and *ella* are not modified by an adjective like nouns. – aguijonazo Nov 08 '22 at 15:20
  • @aguijonazo this definitely rings a bell, since the first time I encountered something like かっこいい貴方 in Japanese it puzzled me, precisely because I regarded 貴方 as a pronoun. I see what you mean. – jarmanso7 Nov 08 '22 at 15:38

3 Answers3

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That translation is not accurate, and I believe this 言葉 means "word" rather than "language".

日本語代名詞の特徴として他の言葉からの転用が多いということが挙げられます。

(lit.) As a charasteristic of Japanese pronouns, one can list (the fact) that there are many borrowings from other (Japanese) words.

One of the characteristics of Japanese pronouns is that many of them are derived words from other (Japanese) words.

転用 is a noun meaning "derived usage", "borrowing", etc. In case you don't know からの by itself, see this.

If I understand correctly, this sentence is saying many Japanese "pronouns" are etymologically derived words. For example, かのじょ is 彼 ("that") + 女 ("woman"), あなた is 彼 ("that") + 方 ("place"), きさま is 貴 ("precious") + 様 (honorific suffix), and so on. This is also why some believe Japanese personal pronouns are not really pronouns (see the discussion in the comment section).

naruto
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からの転用 = repurpose[d] from.

Many Japanese personal pronouns were repurposed phrases that had, or still have, other meanings. あなた was not originally a personal pronoun, for example.

Yusuke Matsubara
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Your question is about からの.

からの is から＋の

Maybe you are confused because there is this の particle while a literal translation back from English would make 他の言葉から転用 looks totally fine, right?

If you are not familiar with の particle check this article

To paraphrase it: "の is like a label maker. It turns a noun into a label that modifies another noun."
Furthermore, it's not just a possessive particle, more of something that links a thing to another (if you prefer mental representations).

So you have to read like this :

他の言葉から の 転用

literally "diversions related from other words"

vdegenne
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