In きょうのJapanese lab, Actually it should be きのう since it's alreadyごぜんさんじ, we discussed about the different purposes of katakana words. I have posted the 5 words I found yesterday and now I'd like to talk about the different kinds of effects/purpose of those words.
There are lots of borrowed words in Japanese. The word ビタミン is borrowed from English----Vitamin. The second word I found----ラーメン is also a loan word which is, according to かくさん, from Chinese. Well it does make sense to me. Because in China there is a kind of noodle which has exactly the same pronunciation as ramen. But I was wondering why is でんわ written in hiragana even it's pronounced exactly the same in Chinese.The last of the 5 word I found---- リヒテンシュタイン, is also a loan word. It's from the German pronunciation of the small country Liechtenstein. People use loan words because they are tired of creating new words for their language. :P
I also found words from the Bleach manga. On the bottom of the picture I posted, there's a word ガラガラ which I guess is the sound of wind blowing through the boy's costume. There are tons of onomatopoeia words in the Japanese language, and they are mostly written in katakana. I think writing sound word in hiragana makes them easy to recognize.
The most interesting word I found is ピカチュウ.
The person who named it said that this 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.
Different textbook introduce katakana in different ways, probably because they are designed for different level of learners. Also, a language is not just about language, it's also about the culture behind it which is something very difficult to explain. The various manners the authors introduce katakana also show us the different perspectives of the interpretion of their own culture.
(One thing I'm really curious about is whether katakana and hiragana are developed at the same time in the history...I'm going to google it. But I have to sleep now.)
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
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3 comments:
ごぜんさじい！ たいへんですね。
That's interesting, about the whole loan word from ちゅうごく thing, where they decided to write ramen in katakana but not denwa... Was there someone way back then saying, okay, this word will be in hiragana, this word will be in katakana...? :>
I would have thought chinese loan words words would be written in kanji..hmm
I have never thought why ラーメン is written in katakana. Most of loan words from China, as you say, are written in kanji extensively. It’s possible to say 中華麺 to mean ラーメン. But I think this word is usually used to describe the noodle as an ingredient. おもしろい分析（ぶんせき=analysis）ですね！
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