Job Discussion Forums

[matador]

I really do not see the consistency in this. In the last week alone whilst travelling around on JR trains, I have seen the easiest English words `katakana-ized': go, stop, Japan, one, etc.

I don`t know why this happens. According to one of my students its to make it easier for older Japanese to understand English.

...okay, I can go along with that to a point.

But when I see advertisments specifically targeted at 15-23 year olds, why are basic words still `katakana-ized' ?

Is there a government authority somewhere who says which words Japanese people cannot understand and therefore must be `katakana-ized' ?

I cannot imagine French (baguette) or Spanish (siesta) words being `phonetic-ized` in advertisements on the tube in London.

Or am I missing a very basic point here.... ??

[Gordon]

I think from a marketing point of view, foreign words here are often idealized. Young people think it is cool, therefore it sells.

[matador]

Point taken and agreed with. But why are these cool English (and often basic) words `katakana-ized` underneath? Is it felt that your average young Japanese consumer needs help to understand the word 'car' as I saw on an ad yesterday on the subway? Who decides what these consumers can and cannot understand...?

[markle]

Ok I'll bite.

I'll turn it on it's head. Why shouldn't it be katakana-ized? Just because you can't read it? I mean from a marketers standpoint you are going to do everything to ensure that your message is going to get through to your target market (believe it or not it they are Japanese) in the most efficent manner. If the wording were in romanji then the majority of Japanese would have to at least take a minute to think (which is advertising DEATH) of what it was saying while being bombarded with a cacophony of other messages in a visual medium they are more accustomed to.

At the end of the day, 95% of a Japanese person's visual communication is in kanji and kana and that is the medium they are most likely to respond to.

[Apsara]

I agree with the above. The romaji is there as an extra to look cool, not to increase the English vocabulary of the populace. The main message is what's written in Japanese.

[PAULH]

[fluffyhamster]

Well, you won't see baguette or siesta in IPA or whatever on the London tube because the three languages are close enough in their orthographies (i.e. have alphabet-based writing systems) that the words can be borrowed as they are - the systems don't "clash" much if at all, and it would be a bit pointless to create alternative phoneticizations. With English words into Japanese, however, changes are more (perfectly, even?) in order, for the reasons others have mentioned.

Still, it is something to ponder - if the Japanese didn't mind adopting Chinese characters, why the "aversion" almost to English orthography? It's not like English words are are less clear than kanji regarding the possible pronunciation; then again, looking at it the other way around, I doubt if we'd like it if those adverts on the tube started using "basic" kanji, eh!

[matador]

At the risk of taking the thread off in another direction... why do so many Japanese school textbooks that teach English have huge chunks of `katakana-ized` text under the English? I have seen phrases such as GOOD MORNING mangled into GOODO MORNINGU. Is it a good idea to use katakana to teach English...?

[fluffyhamster]

Ideally, one wouldn't use katakana transliterations, but learners (especially schoolkids) have to start somewhere and/or need a quick shortcut (e.g. in a phrasebook).

Again, turning the argument around somewhat (even though romaji is a better fit for Japanese due to the simpler nature of the language's sounds), most people studying Japanese rely on romaji rather than kana (much less kanji!) at the lower levels.

Actually, looking at my copy of the new Sunshine course's Book 1 (JHS year one), katakana isn't much in evidence at all, apart from for the names of foreign people or countries; pronunciation is indicated by means of a phonemic script in the glossary at the back of the book (strangely, the phonemics aren't given on the actual pages where the words first occur until Book 2). I'm not sure how the students become familar with the phonemic stuff when it isn't explicitly taught; those kids who do seem to become familar with it perhaps learn it themselves from dictionaries, or their parents, or at juku etc. Anyway, there are alternatives to romanization for those who can see the advantage.

[buddhaboyjp]

What I would like to know is, who is the person responsible for choosing what kana to use for the foreign loan word.

I do not have examples right as of now, but I have seen some English words done poorly with kana, and there ARE better choices, to get closer to the original words pronunciation.

Hmmm........let me think on this and reply later.

[fluffyhamster]

Sometimes the choice of which kana to use seems to be a stylistic thing e.g. for video titles, they prefer less to more, even though with more you'd get a closer rendering of the actual English pronunciation. Generally, they're probably just trying to follow Japanese sound sequences (i.e. make it easier for a Japanese to say) than striving to impress English phoneticians. But I know exactly what you mean about there being to our minds better (and just as efficient, probably equally as easy* etc) choices that could've been made, buddhaboy - it'll be good if you can post some examples.

*Easy and efficient not just in the sense that a Japanese person can say them, but that a foreigner will actually understand them the first rather than the tenth time around.

[6810]

To me, the bigger issue is to do with literacy and learning "proper" Japanese. So many words from English, since it is a dominant economic language are transferred to Japanese and are used in buzzword fashion to sell, sell, sell...

But the problem I see is that this borrowing is far from consistent and there is a lot of meaning "slippage". Nothing wrong there, but how it relates to language learning is this - many perfectly fine Japanese words slip into obscurity for the intermediate Japanese learner.

THen there is the "spatial" (I dunno, I am not a linguistics guy so I am just throwing these words out there) issue - katakana words are often abbreiviated but even so, they look clunky compared to their kanji counterparts, take up a lot of space and aren't always easily readable...

THat's what I reckon

[sallycat]

as to the question of why some katakana words seem badly transliterated, whereas some seem much better: it depends on when the word entered japanese. words that were adopted long ago use katakana combinations that are similar to the syllable combinations found in japanese words, whereas words that have been more recently adopted use innovative combinations of katakana that bring them much closer to the pronunciation in the language that they were adopted from. i used to know some examples of this, but i've forgotten them.

as for the use of katakana in english textbooks, i think it's like the use of ramaji in japanese textbooks (i.e. textbooks for learning japanese). it's stoopid, but it happens.

regarding japanese people adopting kanji from chinese, but being unwilling to adopt romaji -- i believe before they adopted kanji, there was no method of writing japanese. so, a very different situation. or am i wrong?

[markle]

[Apsara]

When I was learning Japanese at university in NZ, one of my professors was the guy officially responsible for transliterating Maori words into katakana.

In the past though I think the transliteration from foreign languages was pretty random, you see lots of inconsistencies, and things like the katakana pronunciation being based on spelling rather than English pronunciation- for example I've always wondered why "studio" became "sutajio" with the totally different "a" sound, and then "stadium" is "sutajiamu" again with a completely different "a" sound to the English. I can only think it was first written in katakana by someone who didn't actually know how the Englsih was pronounced.

As for learning Japanese via romaji- I staretd learning Japanese in the NZ school system from age 12- in the first year we gradually learned hiragana, in my second year we learned katakana- it took that long before we phased out romaji. Of course adults can learn it faster, but I don't think it was a bad way for me to learn at the time.