One of my friends Tom-san do not like the Katakana. The reason she tells is very simple – why Japanese people change the English? She likes Hiragana. For me too Katakana looked awry at first, confusing till now.
When Morishita sensei started teaching Katakana characters at OVTA, Kahin Makuhari, we were telling jokingly that we will forget the hiragana characters that we learned earlier. That was true to some extent. We felt difficulty in recognizing hiragana characters when katakana characters started occupying the brain!
For the same pronunciation of Hiragana characters, there are equivalent katakana characters. This means Katakana and Hiragana are two parallel systems of writing same sounds. Hiragana is used to write words of indigenous origin, while Katakana is used to write Foreign words.
Identifying a foreign word is thus easier in Japanese language. Hiragana in combination with Kanji makes all the indigenous words in Japan and Katakana stands for foreigners!
The trouble is recognizing the foreign word once it is written in Katakana. It is really a mind boggling experience for many foreigners or at least for me! I take a bit time even to read my name written in Katakana. In Katakana, my name will be twisted as ‘Ja-ya-pu-ra-ka-sho’. Fortunately my name is not much twisted and can be easily recovered back to its original shape.
There are certain words in English that Japanese people use and write in Katakana, reading and recognizing which for many foreigners is a brain teasing game. One such word for me is goruden viku. When I encountered this word last year for the first time in a product advertisement caption, I thought of it for quite some time and then started guessing by connecting it with English words. I related all the coming events in the near future in the attempt to retrieve the Japanized foreign word. Finally I recognized it as ‘Golden week’.
Ra-ji-o is another word that cracked my brain. The funny word ever I heard is ‘Kombini’. It was very funny to hear from our Morishita sensei about the Kombini. Kombinis are really Kombini in Japan. She told about the shortening of long word to smaller ones by Japanese people. Then I remembered the manufacturing concept of Japan to make things smaller. Small is beautiful in Japan. So is what happened to the Kombini. Kombini is the shortened for of ‘Convenient store’ used by Japanese people. Morishita sensei said jokingly that Kombini is her kitchen.
I was also depending on Kombini for food till April of this year. In Japan, convenient stores, particularly the a.m p.m are opened for 24 hours. They are called as ‘am pm’ also and are really helpful to bachelors in Japan.
Hoto kohee (hot coffee) is the one I prefer to drink at Maku donarudo (Mc Donald). After lunch we go to the second floor by Esukareta- (Escalator), though there are Erebe-ta- (elevator). At the second floor of Ito Yokado, there are sutoa (store) of Terebi (TV), pasokon (personal computer) and other electronic items as well as some resutoran (Restaurant). Down stairs have stalls for Nekutai (Neck tie), puresento (present, gift) and have a supa (super market). During December, there will be special sales for Kurisumasu keki (Christmas cake). Items from Supain (spain), Itaria (Italy) etc are also available in the shops.
Why Japanese writing system modifies the foreign words. The answer is simple. Japanese language has simple pronunciation based on 5 different accents. They are;
A (sounds like ‘a’ of a ‘cat’ and the ‘u’ in ‘put’)
E (sounds like ‘pet’, ‘set’, ‘get’ etc.)
I (sounds like ee in ‘keen’ or ‘see’ but somewhere shorten like ‘sit’
O (sounds like the one between ‘taught’ and ‘pot’
U (sounds like the u in ‘put’ but the mouth corners may pull back a bit)
When Morishita sensei started teaching Katakana characters at OVTA, Kahin Makuhari, we were telling jokingly that we will forget the hiragana characters that we learned earlier. That was true to some extent. We felt difficulty in recognizing hiragana characters when katakana characters started occupying the brain!
For the same pronunciation of Hiragana characters, there are equivalent katakana characters. This means Katakana and Hiragana are two parallel systems of writing same sounds. Hiragana is used to write words of indigenous origin, while Katakana is used to write Foreign words.
Identifying a foreign word is thus easier in Japanese language. Hiragana in combination with Kanji makes all the indigenous words in Japan and Katakana stands for foreigners!
The trouble is recognizing the foreign word once it is written in Katakana. It is really a mind boggling experience for many foreigners or at least for me! I take a bit time even to read my name written in Katakana. In Katakana, my name will be twisted as ‘Ja-ya-pu-ra-ka-sho’. Fortunately my name is not much twisted and can be easily recovered back to its original shape.
There are certain words in English that Japanese people use and write in Katakana, reading and recognizing which for many foreigners is a brain teasing game. One such word for me is goruden viku. When I encountered this word last year for the first time in a product advertisement caption, I thought of it for quite some time and then started guessing by connecting it with English words. I related all the coming events in the near future in the attempt to retrieve the Japanized foreign word. Finally I recognized it as ‘Golden week’.
Ra-ji-o is another word that cracked my brain. The funny word ever I heard is ‘Kombini’. It was very funny to hear from our Morishita sensei about the Kombini. Kombinis are really Kombini in Japan. She told about the shortening of long word to smaller ones by Japanese people. Then I remembered the manufacturing concept of Japan to make things smaller. Small is beautiful in Japan. So is what happened to the Kombini. Kombini is the shortened for of ‘Convenient store’ used by Japanese people. Morishita sensei said jokingly that Kombini is her kitchen.
I was also depending on Kombini for food till April of this year. In Japan, convenient stores, particularly the a.m p.m are opened for 24 hours. They are called as ‘am pm’ also and are really helpful to bachelors in Japan.
Hoto kohee (hot coffee) is the one I prefer to drink at Maku donarudo (Mc Donald). After lunch we go to the second floor by Esukareta- (Escalator), though there are Erebe-ta- (elevator). At the second floor of Ito Yokado, there are sutoa (store) of Terebi (TV), pasokon (personal computer) and other electronic items as well as some resutoran (Restaurant). Down stairs have stalls for Nekutai (Neck tie), puresento (present, gift) and have a supa (super market). During December, there will be special sales for Kurisumasu keki (Christmas cake). Items from Supain (spain), Itaria (Italy) etc are also available in the shops.
Why Japanese writing system modifies the foreign words. The answer is simple. Japanese language has simple pronunciation based on 5 different accents. They are;
A (sounds like ‘a’ of a ‘cat’ and the ‘u’ in ‘put’)
E (sounds like ‘pet’, ‘set’, ‘get’ etc.)
I (sounds like ee in ‘keen’ or ‘see’ but somewhere shorten like ‘sit’
O (sounds like the one between ‘taught’ and ‘pot’
U (sounds like the u in ‘put’ but the mouth corners may pull back a bit)
It seems, the Japanese people fit all the words in to the five sounds. Certainly there are many other sounds in foreign languages. In order to write them and fit them to readable and writable in Japanese language, the foreign words must be twisted and forged to make it Japanese! Thus the Japanized version of foreign words becomes very funny to foreigners.
A cake might be tasty to everyone, but how about if some Japanese ask you if you want to eat a keki?
Funny indeed! This reminds me of a funny incident that happened about 10 years back. The institute where I was working at that time made a list of researchers supposed to give talks during a group meeting. My name was written as クンヅ (Kundu). There were a lot of foreigners in that institute. And so I did not even think that it was my name written in the list and that it was supposed to be me! Needless to say, I had not prepared for the talk :) Later my senior told me that to get a correct katakana for my name, I have to type it as 'kundou'.
ReplyDeleteThat is really nice experience Manisha. I studied Tamil language. Tamil also have the similar kind of problem of modifying foreign words for them to pronounce easier. The technical terms written in Katakana are the real brain teasers for me. Anyway getting along with them slowly.
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