Irregular uses of Katakana
Besides the obvious cases of using Katakana for Loanwords or Onomatopoeia, there are many examples of using Katakana over Hiragana when making emphasis.
1) Loanword, ライオン、Lion
2) Onomatopoeia, ワンワン、Wan Wan ('bow wow'; the sound dogs make).
3) Emphasis, ババ, Daddy ( for a very intimate and personal expression toward a loved one).
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090325220958AAKVQ82
4) No category, カラオケ , Karaoke
5) Emphasis, イマ、 NOW ! to emphasize the word in advertisement
6) No category, スズキ、マスダ , Brand Names
7) No category, コンニチワ, 'konnichiwa' but spoken with an accent by a foreigner.
Brand Names
Using Katakana differentiates brand/company names from names of common people.
As a result, it makes the brand standout more; an ordinary family name such as Suzuki has become distinguished for special, proprietary use. Everyone knows it refers to the carmaker brand.
Stores use katakana on marquee to draw attention of customers with irregular use of a common word; katakana can also be more compatible or suitable for a design purpose. Advertisement works in the same way. People are not used to reading common words in Katakana, so it draws attention.
Very interesting! I should look closer to katakana when I go back to Japan.
ReplyDeleteThat's very interesting findings. Many of these uses are new to me too, ありがとうございます。
ReplyDeleteLion/ライオン, actually has a Kanji 獅子(しし）, that is representing the same meaning of the animal lion. Though it's not unusual to see two different word representing same meaning in any Language, there is a difference here. ライオン is only used with the actual animal we know, and しし can be used, besides the actual animal, with a powerful and furious figure resembling lion, e.g. Richard the Lionheart is called しし(lion)+しん(heart)＋おう（king), other than using ライオン。The simple reason is that there was no such actual lion in Japan before the globalization, thus the kanji they used for lion is basicly related to fairy tales.
Examples like karaoke is categorized as Wasei-Eigo（和製英語）(English made in Japan), due to the fact that it is made by combining English and Japanese together, or reforming katakana form of English by Japanese for ease of usage. Kara means "void, empty" and Oke is from Orchestra, thus it means "to sing without anyone else, by the instrumental sound".
And all these emphasizing katakana can be considered as a "upper case" of the original form since there's no such entity in Japanese. As you can see, many ways of using katakana liken the uppercase in English.
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ReplyDeleteIt looks like you found some interesting カタカナ words. The word パパ is usually used by small children when they refer to their dad (in English, it can be "daddy). Its origin comes from the word "papa" in Latin, meaning "Pope" .
ReplyDeleteWith the wordイマ, how was the word used in the context? Was it used in a sentence or by itself? I think it will be interesting to elaborate more on this word.
Also, don't forget to summarize the different rules and definitions of カタカナ.
Good luck!