Learn how to tell native Japanese words and Sino-Japanese words apart, and why the difference matters for honorifics and formality.
Wago vs Kango: Native and Sino-Japanese Words
~6 min read
In a nutshell: if you want to build certain honorifics and control how formal your Japanese sounds, you need to be able to tell native Japanese words and Sino-Japanese words apart.
Table of Contents
The Basics
Japanese has borrowed words from all over the world.
A lot of loanwords come from English, which is a nice bonus for native English speakers (once you get used to katakana spellings). Japanese has also borrowed from many other languages too, including Chinese, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, and Ainu.
Most loanwords are easy to spot for two reasons:
They’re usually written in katakana (the script most commonly used for loanwords)
They often don’t sound especially “Japanese” to learners
So far, so good.
But there’s one huge group of loanwords that’s much harder to spot.
The Harder-to-Spot Loanwords: Kango (漢語かんご)
The biggest group of loanwords in Japanese comes from Japan’s close neighbour, China, and these are often much less obvious.
These words are called kango 漢語かんご, meaning “Sino-Japanese words” (literally, “Han words”).
Kango were borrowed:
from different Chinese languages
over many centuries
The term “Sino-Japanese” points to an origin in China generally, not one single Chinese language or one single historical period.
A Quick Note on the Character 漢かん (Kan)
You’ve probably seen 漢かん (kan) in words like:
漢字かんじ (kanji) — literally, “Han characters”
This 漢かん refers to the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE).
Chinese-origin vocabulary spread into every part of Japanese, and it has been doing so for well over a thousand years. Because of that, learners often study kango without even realizing it.
In fact, many Japanese speakers may not consciously notice that very common words are of Chinese origin — especially older borrowings like 馬うま.
Even the word for Japan itself is kango:
日本にほん／にっぽん — read にほん or にっぽん
And so are many numbers, including:
一いち (ichi, “one”)
二に (ni, “two”)
三さん (san, “three”)
Native Words: Wago (和語わご)
Many learners already know the other counting system:
一つひとつ (hitotsu)
二つふたつ (futatsu)
三つみっつ (mittsu)
This system is native in origin.
Native Japanese words are called wago (和語わご), meaning “native words” (literally, “Japanese words”).
The term is made of:
和わ (wa) — “Japan”
語ご (go) — “language / word”
And yes, ironically, the word wago itself is actually a kango term.
You may already know 和わ (wa) from words like:
和牛わぎゅう (wagyū) — “Japanese beef”
和製英語わせいえいご (wasei eigo) — “made-in-Japan English” (Japanese-made English-style words), including forms like ポケモン (from “pocket” + “monsters”).
Why This Matters for Honorifics
This distinction is essential because wago and kango behave differently when you form:
honorifics
and more generally, when you set the formality level of your speech
One of the most popular respectful and humble verb forms is the adding form.
But before you can make that form, you need to know whether the plain verb is:
a wago verb, or
a kango verb
Luckily, this is usually pretty straightforward.
How to Spot Wago Verbs
Wago verbs are usually made of:
one kanji
followed by one or more hiragana endings (called okurigana).
Examples (okurigana in bold):
食べるたべる (taberu)
飲むのむ (nomu)
Why This Happens
Japanese verbs conjugate to show things like tense and politeness, which means the verb form itself changes. This is not something that Chinese languages or Chinese-origin words can do.
So no matter how much a wago verb changes form, it keeps those trailing hiragana endings.
Example: 食べるたべる
食べるたべる (taberu)
食べたたべた (tabeta)
食べましたたべました (tabemashita)
Those changing hiragana endings are a big clue: this is a wago verb.
A Special Case: する
Sometimes, a wago verb is written entirely in hiragana.
A key example is:
する “to do”
This is a light verb.
That means it carries only a light meaning by itself, and gets most of its meaning from the noun before it. As we’ll see next.
Kango Verbs and Nominal Verbs
When する attaches to a kango noun, the result is often called a nominal verb.
These kango nouns are often:
two-kanji compounds
read with on’yomi (音読みおんよみ, “Chinese reading”)
Example: 出発するしゅっぱつする
出発しゅっぱつ (shuppatsu) = the noun “departure”
する attaches to it
出発するしゅっぱつする = “to depart” (literally, something like “departure-do”)
Key takeaway: wago verbs usually have okurigana, while kango verbs often look like a two-kanji noun + する.