I looked at online newspapers like Asahi (Asashi.com) to find my katakana words, and I was surprised to find that many were "borrowed" from English, such as キャリアアップ、 カタログ、トレーニング, and レッスン. (career, catalogue, training, and lesson). While I understood the concept of borrowed words, I believe that these concepts existed in some indigenous form within Japan prior to contact with English language speakers. Therefore, the usage of these terms is not merely a question of using the foreign alphabet to represent foreign ideas.
I think we can see that there is some sort of cachet to using English words, or some purpose beyond pure necessity. For the terms I have listed above, I can see how some might have felt that they were associated too deeply with traditional forms of education, particularly in terms of the kanji terminologies. Perhaps we can sense a desire to emphasize the modern and global implications of these new usages in opposition to Confucian interpretations of the same concepts. Perhaps, furthermore, there is a feeling that these modern and global terminologies will be beneficial to the reader, providing a greater ability to interact outside of the Japan sphere. Or, maybe they just seem cooler.
Very interesting post!
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of borrowed words in Japanese. It's actually pretty difficult to communicate in Japanese with just using purely Japanese language, haha.
great observation, if I understood your post correctly. So you mean for example, something like using the word カメラ when there is already a word for it using Japanese, like 写真機 （しゃしんき）or saying クラス instead of 授業（じゅぎょう). There is also a question of simply fitting in society in every day conversation. People end up using words in the same way that is used around them, which ultimately reinforces whatever the first notion might have been. In any case, one thing that are important to realize is that the rules explained in text books are not sufficient since the rules are always changing. - sugimoto
ReplyDeleteInteresting analysis! In the text books, mainly Katakana is used as three categories: onomatopoeia (like sound: ワンワン), loan words(キャリアアップ,カタログ) and emphasis.
ReplyDeleteI agree with that "there is a feeling that these modern and global terminologies will be beneficial to the reader, providing a greater ability to interact outside of the Japan sphere".
And have you seen katakana is used as emphasis, if so what do you think why they choose to use the katakana as emphasis?-by こばやし
Interesting ideas! I hadn't thought about how that even though they had all these words, they still choose to use ours. Perhaps it's something subtle that is hard to see from the outside, like when using ハンサム (i'm sure they had an equivalent in japanese before we came along) perhaps by saying it in english or any foreign language it's kind of undermining the meaning of the word, and making it lose some of it's edge.
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