A small discussion on the linguistic fundamentals of Japanese
I was having a conversation with a fellow the other day about Chinese, as he had studied Mandarin, and naturally giving that I have studied Japanese, the topic came to it.
Shortly after introducing the topic, we dawdled onto the usage and purpose of katakana within Japanese. To my misfortune, the individual I was discussing katakana with grew so inflamed by my insistence that he was not understanding neither the origin nor the development of katakana's role in Japanese, that he ended the discussion abruptly and left.
This sudden culling of a conversation I was enjoying so much left me with a desire to continue talking about the subject matter. I will leave my thoughts here, and if anyone reading has an opinion on the matter, I would like him to send an e-mail to the WafuWafu group e-mail about it.
The most original purpose of katakana within Japanese seems to me to be the writing down of pronounced sounds, to differentiate between them and real parts of speech. To compare with English, the difference between writing the 'A' in apple and the sound 'Ah' of apple. This can be seen in the writing of onmoji and onomatopeia.
Katakana eventually, most likely with the introduction of Chinese characters (thus kanji, onmoji, etc.), became used for foreign words, much like in English the origins of the words barbarian - 'bar-bar' being an onomatopeia (syllabary translation, in other words) for foreign words.
With America's heavy involvement in Japan after World War 2, part of a de-nazi-fication of Japan, the Japanese began to adopt many loan words from English, which naturally became expressed in katakana. What was few loan words quickly became many, and eventually the usage of English, bastardized sometimes far from its original pronunciation, became an ordinary mixture in otherwise full Japanese sentences. The reason for the prolific spread, I suppose, would be the usage of English in manga publications - which were just starting at the time and put English in the minds of many children as being 'cool' - and the usage of English in business, where most Japanese companies were partners with English ones.
Thus, katakana is not a method of translating foreign words for the Japanese, but simply a method of delineating and expressing foreign words in the native Japanese palate.
And it was at this final conclusion that the fellow I was conversing with disagreed. From his perspective, which was on the other end of the lens, today backwards, katakana was a method for directly translating into Japanese. As he saw it, it was a semantic difference, but it was a truthfully a difference in mindset. To him, there was no Japanese other than the current: anything conducted by them was and is traditionally Japanese, and if there was an English identical, it was because the Japanese had 'translated' the English into Japanese, adopting and assimilating it to a native Japanese equivalent.
And to him I say, and continue to say, that a word, unchanged but for shaping to the palate of the speaker, cannot be a translation, for it is yet the same word, with one meaning, one idea behind it.
If you have a comment, please write to the group e-mail.
Thank you,
G.G.
Shortly after introducing the topic, we dawdled onto the usage and purpose of katakana within Japanese. To my misfortune, the individual I was discussing katakana with grew so inflamed by my insistence that he was not understanding neither the origin nor the development of katakana's role in Japanese, that he ended the discussion abruptly and left.
This sudden culling of a conversation I was enjoying so much left me with a desire to continue talking about the subject matter. I will leave my thoughts here, and if anyone reading has an opinion on the matter, I would like him to send an e-mail to the WafuWafu group e-mail about it.
The most original purpose of katakana within Japanese seems to me to be the writing down of pronounced sounds, to differentiate between them and real parts of speech. To compare with English, the difference between writing the 'A' in apple and the sound 'Ah' of apple. This can be seen in the writing of onmoji and onomatopeia.
Katakana eventually, most likely with the introduction of Chinese characters (thus kanji, onmoji, etc.), became used for foreign words, much like in English the origins of the words barbarian - 'bar-bar' being an onomatopeia (syllabary translation, in other words) for foreign words.
With America's heavy involvement in Japan after World War 2, part of a de-nazi-fication of Japan, the Japanese began to adopt many loan words from English, which naturally became expressed in katakana. What was few loan words quickly became many, and eventually the usage of English, bastardized sometimes far from its original pronunciation, became an ordinary mixture in otherwise full Japanese sentences. The reason for the prolific spread, I suppose, would be the usage of English in manga publications - which were just starting at the time and put English in the minds of many children as being 'cool' - and the usage of English in business, where most Japanese companies were partners with English ones.
Thus, katakana is not a method of translating foreign words for the Japanese, but simply a method of delineating and expressing foreign words in the native Japanese palate.
And it was at this final conclusion that the fellow I was conversing with disagreed. From his perspective, which was on the other end of the lens, today backwards, katakana was a method for directly translating into Japanese. As he saw it, it was a semantic difference, but it was a truthfully a difference in mindset. To him, there was no Japanese other than the current: anything conducted by them was and is traditionally Japanese, and if there was an English identical, it was because the Japanese had 'translated' the English into Japanese, adopting and assimilating it to a native Japanese equivalent.
And to him I say, and continue to say, that a word, unchanged but for shaping to the palate of the speaker, cannot be a translation, for it is yet the same word, with one meaning, one idea behind it.
If you have a comment, please write to the group e-mail.
Thank you,
G.G.