Two katakana from magzine:
- ポーズ pose / noun, a loanword from English
- キラキラ glitter; sparkle; glisten; twinkle/onomatopoeia
Questions
1)This is clearly a loanword from English. What is interesting here is that: there should be a Japanese word for the meaning of pose or gesture though I do not know what it is. Why would people/this magazine use a loanword instead? At least from the source where I get this word, I see a young woman displaying her stretching Yoga pose.Considering the intended readers of this magazine, I guess the word is adopted by young westernized generation and has already been well incorporated into their daily lives just as how Hong Kong people use the word "pose".
2)To mimic the sound of the sparkle to represent the shiny state. It is amazing how Japanese people found the kirakira sound. But maybe it come from the sound of burning charcoal fire where I have heard similar sounds.
why each textbook is different in explaining katakana, and why the textbooks explained katakana in the manners that they did.
- I did not find such differences..if there are some, the reason could be different knowledge backgrounds and research approaches of the interpreters. After all, katakana themselves are phenomenon to be analyzed just as what we are doing here.
I think what you point out is really interesting–about the fact that often there is a loan word even though technically the word also/already exists in Japanese. I guess this reflects the tiny semantics involved, such as with "pose", suggesting that the Western idea of "pose" differs enough with the Japanese idea to merit its own word. It appears to be much the same situation as ダンス. :)
ReplyDeleteおもしろいですね！I also agree that the frequent adoption of loan words despite the existence of similar expressions in Japanese suggest an increasing presence of foreign cultures in Japan, since one has to be aware of the context of the loan word in order to tell the difference between the loan word and the Japanese version of it.
ReplyDeleteI'm amazed by Japanese people's imagination to come up with words like "kirakira" as well. The more I use these words the more I how feel how well thought they are. Some other of my favorite includes "fuwafuwa(ふわふわ)", describing something soft and fluffy like the cloud~ かわいいでしょう＝Ｄ
I also think that it's really interesting how there are so many well-known onomatopeic sounds in Japanese. Obviously, we have onomatopeia in English too, but a lot of times people just make up their own way to describe a sound. It seems that in Japanese, on the other hand, onomatopeia is cultural, everyone knows what sound has what katakana representation--there are dictionaries that tell you what specific onomatopeia represents what sound, etc.
ReplyDeleteLoan words are pretty prevalent in other languages as well, not just Japanese. I think it's a good way to emphasize the exotic features of certain words, like シューマイ. But there are also some random loan words in Japanese that I'm not sure how they became popular, like ドンマイ (don't mind), especially since it's not really used among English speakers.
ReplyDeleteI think onomatopoeias are in katakana since there's no corresponding kanji characters.
Maybe the word "pose" is written in katakana to highlight some sense of modernity? If there's a kanji word for "pose", it probably originated quite a long time ago, so maybe the magazine wanted to use katakana to emphasize a new kind of "pose" that's not the same as what people were used to before? When someone uses a katakana word, it sometimes seems like that word or concept is so new that it hasn't been adopted fully into japanese or given a proper kanji writing. Maybe it's the same here? Just an idea. :)
ReplyDeleteOnomatopoeia is really interesting! I also think phenomimes and psychomimes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_sound_symbolism) are fascinating, especially when a sound is used to describe a sensation, like つるつる, which means smooth.
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this is very interesting. It seems that the westernization of asia is prevelant. There are also other examples on other ppls blogs about loan words being used for the cause of showing modernality rather than the conventional usage of a foreign word not in use by the language of the japanese.
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