ガリガリクン：
Gari-Gari Kun is the name of a crunchy Japanese popsicle. The name "gari-gari" derives from the sound it makes when bitten into. I've found Japanese onomatopoeia interpretation much more creative than those found in English. If Gari-Gari Kun had been introduced in an English speaking country the name may be far less inventive. English has only a few onomatopeia choices for a crunching sound, and each of those are used quite frequently. For example "crunch" in American snack foods appears in Cap'n Crunch, Crunch n Munch, Nestle Crunch, even health food such as Kashii GoLean Crunch to name only a few. One would be hard-pressed to find sound words as creative as Japanese in English.
ザトウクジラ："Zatou Kudzira", or humpback whale. I found this word in a Japanese tour book for Alaska. It's interesting that some animals' names were strictly 'loanwords' and others had Japanese versions. For instance humback whale is "zatou kudzira" but Beluga whale is simply "beruga". It's possible the beluga was discovered much later than humpbacks. Of course, it is likely that the book used katakana for each animal to give a standard appearance in the book, or it may be that humpback whale or most animals written in kanji are not as well known.
Katakana has many different applications; a fairly long history. My conclusion as to why there exists multiple textbook explanations on the matter is that katakana is over a thousand years old, originally used as a form of shorthand for Buddhist monks to transfer sacred texts. Since then, it's use has been changed multiple times due to different rulers in Japan, and most recently World War II. During the war, many modern loanwords were given new Japanese names. With all the change throughout history there is bound to be a degree of variance in katakana use.
5 comments:
I see you mentioned onomatopoeia and loan words, as well as the history of shorthand.
what sort of effect do you think writing in katakana has versus writing in hiragana? For instance, if "garigari" was written in hiragana, what would the difference be?
I agree with you: katakana is used in various ways especially because the language has such a long history of development so there are really no set rules for when to use which...which brings me to my old argument: doesn't this seem chaotic to you? Hehe...like you said, to a foreign speaker, it is extremely confusing at times. But I guess we will just have to get used to it and hopefully one day katakana/hiragana will become clear to us...
Hi, I'm a Smith college 3rd year Japanese student and even though your analysis in regards to the use of Katakana in the Japanese language is accurate,you missed a couple of things. If you thought about it, why are most onomatopoeia written in katakana as opposed to hiragana. While the same sound can be expressed in hiragana, I believe that they choose to express it in katakana because it not only stands out more, but gives off a different feeling than its hiragana counterpart. Also katakana can be useed to express words that are originally in hiragana as a way of making the word pop out. I don't always understand why katakana is used but I hope this helps a little =/ がんばってね！
I like your idea of the discovery issue as in the beluga whale could have been discovered later than the humpback. It makes sense to me anyway; I feel that the earlier the thing was know the more likely it would be written in kanji than in katakana. But I do agree with Sakura-san it's a little chaotic :P
Hmm, in regard to the whale comments, why do you think that some words have japanese equivalents and katakana versions as well? I agree with the the idea that the difference in katakana translations could be in the difference in times they were discovered, but do you think it could also be a simple manner of convenience?
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