Monday, October 26, 2009

かたかな プロジェクト

I didn't realize how easy it is to find katakana until I started finding them. I opened a japanese fashion magazine and there're just tons of katakanas. There are even more in comic books. Here are the 5 words I found.

1.

ビタミン Vitamin



2.Neko Rahmen (猫ラーメン) also known as Neko Ramen, is a Japanese flash anime series based on Kenji Sonishi's yonkoma. The comedy centers around a cat (Taishou) and his encounters running a ramen shop. (info from Wikipedia)



3.Okay I believe everyone knows him. Yes, ピカチュウ
The name is a portmanteau of the Japanese words pikapika, an onomatopoeia for electric sparkling, and chū, which is the Japanese onomatopoeia for a mouse's squeak.


4.This pic is from one of the comic books I'm reading now. It's called Bleach. It's very popular in China. But I don't know if it's popular here. Look at this picture. There's katakana ガとボとオthere.
Click HERE to see the picture clearly.


5.ふしぎ(mysterious)のくに----> リヒテンシュタイン
Liechtenstein is a very small country between switzerland and Austria as shown on the map. When I try to find picture of リヒテンシュタイン in google, it bumped up with the word 不思議 (ふしぎ). Google translate says this word means mysterious. Well, Liechtenstein is really mysterious to me. I'd never heard of it until 10th grade.

じゃあ、また〜

6 comments:

Keeley said...

このポストおわりましたさんじまでにですか。You amaze me.

Stephen said...

Hey Qinglan! Your katakana examples are グレート!

I the ramen one reminded me of this. XD
http://i34.tinypic.com/2wme8er.jpg

I liked the Pikachu one. I never understood his name until now, どうも! =)

The Bleach example was pretty amusing to me. When I was looking for katakana examples, I also thought of using a page from Bleach, but Kubo's katakana is always written so messily, I can barely read it. むずかしいですよ!@_@

とてもおもしろい!よくやった。

Qinglanチンラン said...

Stephen さん ありがとう。I saw the ramen picture through the link you provided.すてきですね。 I want to buy one and keep it on my bookshelf. EVA is the one classic anime which I really love.

About Bleach, I think Kubo is such a caligrapher, his handwriting is very unique and beautiful, although it's sometimes too hard for us to recognize. :P

Stephen said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Stephen said...

Ah geez, I really need to watch Eva, actually. @_@ I'm really bad at watching classic stuff like Eva, Cowboy Bebop, and such. I mostly just watch stuff as it comes out. ざんねんですよ。v_v;;

By the way, to write Evangelion in katakana is like this, エヴァンゲリオン. But on the cover of this issue of Newtype, http://i38.tinypic.com/14xz0vq.jpg , instead of using エ they use ヱ. o_O According to a katakana sheet I found online, ヱ = wye. O_o わかりません。。。

Yeah, you're right, the way he writes looks pretty cool, and really dramatic, too, which works well cause it's supposed to accentuate the situation and stuff.

Unknown said...

Hello! My name is Haruna. I'm a Japanese girl.
I saw your blog. I think you study about Japanese well!! I was surprised.

I think Japanese is very difficult because it has Kannji, Hiragana and Katakana.

But almost Japanese use Kataana unconscious.
I think we use it when we use the words like denizen, onomatopoeia.
Sometimes we use it when we want to emphasize the words.

Written Japanese isn't only telling. Be using them properly, you can tell the atmosphere.

This is my opinion so not all Japanese think like me.
It would be appreciate if my idea serves as areference.