Eli5: Why does it seem like Japanese often translates from English phonetically (camera = カメラ ‘kamera’) while Chinese seems to translate conceptually (照相机 ‘zhao xiang ji’ is literally “photo taking machine”)
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The same reason English adds foreign loan words and German makes up new compound words.
They’re completely different languages from completely different cultures that just happen to share an alphabet.
Because Chinese, Japanese and Korean all use kanji we in the west can think they are similar languages like French and Italian. But they aren’t at all. They just got their writing system from China.
So there is no real reason to believe they would use words in the same way. They are different at almost every level. Even their history and the way they have interacted with English speaking countries is different and influential. Japan consumes a looooooot more English speaking media.
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