- Joined
- Feb 4, 2023
Coming from an amateur Chinese speaker, a school in general (so all schools) in Chinese and Japanese be 学校 (xuéxiào/gakkō), which is the Chinese loan word that the Japanese adopted along with 大学. The Japanese 学園 (Gakuen) itself is a Japanese-made up word dating back to the 1890s that refers to private schools or schools that are legally corporations (if translated directly, it's academies), but private schools can range from all categories and ages like what you said.
Here's a list to prevent confusion:
- 学校 (xuéxiào/gakkō) - a direct loan-word that means a school in Chinese and Japanese. It refers to any school
- 大学 (dàxué/daigaku) - a direct loan-word that means a university in Chinese and Japanese
- 学院 (xuéyuàn) - college, compared to 大学, which means university. In Chinese, a college is a part of a university. The Japanese use it as a loan word (gakuin) to be a synonym for 学校 and 学園 (学园 is not really a word in Chinese). College in Japanese is translated as カレッジ (karejji) using kana and not kanji and it's a direct pronunciation of the English word college.
- 校园 (xiàoyuán) - campus. Campus in Japanese is translated as キャンパス (kyanpasu) which is also entirely kana and it's a direct pronounication of the English word campus. 校园 is a Chinese-only word that the Japanese did not adopt as loan-word. It's also another way to write the English word schoolyard because of the words 校 (school) and 园 (yard).
- 学園 (gakuen) is the Japanese way of writing schoolyard or schoolgarden instead of the Chinese 校园, which in today's definition in Japanese, is a private school. It is an original Japanese word.
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