Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Katakana Analysis Draft

  
        The two Katakana words I chose are both from the website of  Hello Kitty: http://www.sanrio.co.jp/
  One word is キャラクター which means "Character". This is a loan word which is borrowed from English and incorporated into Japanese. The other word is the name of the hello kitty company: サンリオ (Sanrio). I don't think this is a loanword cause there is no meaning for "Sanrio" in English. So this is might just a expression of the names of companies. As I known, a lot companies in Japan express their name in Katakana. Like Toyota トヨタ。
  Katakana is used instead of Hiragana to give the pronunciation of a word written in Roman characters, or for a foreign word or for company name. Using Katakana is to distinguish between native words and foreign words. This is meaningless to create a new Hiragana word which has the same pronunciation with the foreign word.
         Each textbook is different in explaining katakana because Katana is a flexible form. There is no such rule that in what circumstances Katanaka must be used. We can actually create Katatana word if we want. Therefore, categorize them in a same way is very hard. In lyrics, for emphasis or to change meaning, Katakana was also used differently in past times than now. And in this fast changing society, as in when Japan opened up to European and America, it brings a lot influence to Katakana. A lot words were created and I believe there are still a lot words are creating now. Because of this, I think there is no one right way to define Katakana, and so every textbook is a different person's perspective on this varying history and unique characteristic of the Japanese.

4 comments:

Idée Fixe said...

いいですね。
Hello Kittyはとてもかわいいです。
and you are right. sanrio doesn't exist in english!

Kristen said...

Katakana is definitely used in a lot of different ways. The company names are interesting, but I think it's for emphasis, or to make the name stand out in advertisements. Katakana is often used for emphasis, like in song lyrics as you pointed out.
よかったですよ!

Odori247 said...

You made me think of katakana loan words and how there are katakana words for words that already exist in Japanese. Some examples include "hair" in katakana (ヘア or かみのけ)、and apple アップル or りんご。At this point, katakana isn't quite interchangeable with hiragana, but I think that it might be in the future.

Idée Fixe said...

if you want a better analysis,
totally check out laurent's!
shoshinatwork.blogspot.com