Spoken Japanese absolutely takes shortcuts because it can get very tedious quickly. They often do not specifically specify a plural when talking about something: Eg: Goat is ヤギ (yagi) and Goats is also ヤギ (yagi)--- or more apparent in the word Manga as it can both mean an individual 'comic book' or 'all the comic books'. So they usually depend on context to discern whether it's plural or not. You're more likely to know something is a plural if they use we/our/their instead of I, the rest of the time it'll depend on context. So its definitely not the same as English. They do heavily borrow English words (and are pronounced close enough to the actual English word), but the way they're identified is a bit unique in writing. Katakana characters are exclusively used for borrowed words (often English). Eg: バスケットボール, which when broken down is this: バ (ba) ス (su) ケッ (ke--) ト (to) ボー (bo-o) ル (ru) aka basketball. Hirigana and Katakana characters are written differently but have the exact same pronunciation, but one is exclusively for foreign words/concepts. Although some English speakers take shortcuts as well-- particularly in dialects that are commonly spoken more slowly--- like how Southerners use y'all/y'all'd'n't've/etc.. Japanese do occasionally prefer to use English words instead of Japanese words for some things because English can be very concise (or in a lot of cases, faster) to communicate with. Even in a business environment (where you think there'd be more formality) you can hear English words being dropped with regular frequency.