Katakana Analysis(Draft)
1. Loanwords/Foreign names
This is a picture from a famous Japanese comic/cartoon Detective Conan名探偵コナン. The name Conan is from the author of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Author Conan Doyle, a world-known English writer. Therefore, it is written in katakana.
2.Fashion?
The picture is from an interesting website Culture Japan which introduces a lot about Japanese food, places of interest, social activities, etc. This is a signboard of 東京チカラめし, a well-known restaurant in Japan. チカラ is the pronouciation of 力, a kanji which means power and energy. There might be two reasons for this rewritten sign. The first one is that the Chinese character力 is similar to カ in katakana. In order to avoid the misunderstaning, 力 is replaced by katakana. Secondly, katakana is more fashionable than hiragana, which is often regarded as childish.
3. Loanwords
This is a picture of a food packaging box, from a blog of a Japanese writer. Here we have several names rewritten in katakana, all from foreign names of food. The name on the top on the packing box クッキース is from the English name "cookies". The three names on the bottom on leftside list three tastes of the cookies. The first one is the ココナッツ coconut; the second one is カスタードcustard;the last one is チョコーレートchocolate. It seems that all the three kinds of food are not avaible in the previous Japan.
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ReplyDeleteBasically, loanwords cannot be expressed in Japanese. Kanji came from China, and it has several meanings which can be guessed from the Kanji. Hiragana(Kana) was made at the age of Muromachi (13 century), so it's originally Japanese words. It was originally made for female literary.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, Katakana was made in order to express loanwords originally, but as time passed, it has expressed a kind of "fashionable".
I am not sure but I think as early as the time when The Tale of Genji was written there was Hiragana. It is interesting that it was created by women and could finally influence the writing system of the whole Japanese society.
DeleteI understand people regard using katakana as a fashion, since Chinese people do the same thing. Producers are always making the names of commodities look like foreign names.
I totally agree with your analysis. I, as Japanese, think it looks better when it was written by katakana. Katana also express like what foreigners say, so we express what foreigners say or not perfect Japanese that foreigners say by using katakana. When I went abroad, they asked me like this “why are there three types of written languages in Japanese? so confused” Absolutely, but I don’t know why I do so, it’s natural, it’s a Japanese culture. I think the most difficult thing when you lean Japanese is this culture. It’s difficult to understand.
DeleteYes. In the eyes of people outside the East Asian cultural circle, Japanese culture is difficult to understand. Even I, a Chinese, sometimes get confused. But the culture is still fascinating to me,especially after I took a class of ancient Japanese history.
DeleteAs for the weirde writing system of Japanese, I do not think it has much to do with culture. I think it comes from the inevitable conflicts resulted from the fact that the ancient Japanese people applied directly the kanji to the whole different Japanese speech system without also applying the corresponding speech system with kanji. Yet they still maintained the meanings of kanji. Such a chaos!
よいanalysesですね。
ReplyDeleteAs you mentioned, I would totally read "力めし" as "kameshi"! :)
As for the third sample, I think your analysis about cookies, chocolate, and custard cream is right, but in Japanese we could call coconuts 椰子の実（やしのみ）. Why do you think they did not try to use the equivalent in kanji or hiragana instead of using katakana?
がんばってください！
TA:あおき
Thank you for you advice. I didn't consider that. That is probably to be in consistent with the other two flavors in katakana. It seems strange to me if two in katakana and one in kanji are put together. Maybe a byproduct is fashion.
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