'Nass,' 'chako cake' and other cute things my students intuited

The confusing thing for many English learners from Japan is that there is an ever-expanding segment of the Japanese lexicon derived from a foreign language - often times English, but also French, German etc. Thus the word for bread is 'pan' after the French 'pain,' the word for backpack is 'ryukku' after the German 'rucksack' and things like apple and orange are simply that, with some necessary vowels thrown in: 'appuru' and 'orenji'

This leads all kinds of people to make the error that they can assume reverse conversions are effective, applying a rule that doesn't always apply. Like how little kids sometimes say 'runned' instead of 'ran.' One of my favorite stories entails a group of 5 & 6 year-olds who would enthusiastically shout the English for the things depicted on my flash cards: "APPLE" "ORANGE" "CABBAGE"

Then they see an eggplant, that purple 'onasu' and shout "NASS" much to my glee.

Or the half-Japanese boy who spoke with nary an accent and proudly informed me that for his snack he was going to get some chako cake.

I had an adult student tell me that she was 'grading up' her computer system, and another who wanted to talk about the new designer 'G-pan' she got.

The seamless blending of the world - it ain't easy. Anyone know where we stand with the whole Esperanto effort anyway?