- Choose at least 2 katakana words/expressions that you found and think about what kinds of effects / purposes there may be in these words/expressions writing in katakana instead of hiragana or kanji.
Two katakana words that I found particularly interesting were スタバる and ドラえもん. スタバる means "to go to Starbucks", and is a fusion of both katakana and hiragana. Since it was pronounced as "sutabaro", I was curious as to why there was a specific verb to describe going to Starbucks, and why the phrase was a mix of the two Japanese alphabets. My reasoning for this is that Starbucks is popular in Japan, so this phrase can help shorten it, thus essentially converting verb into a slang phrase. トヨタ is the katakana word for "Toyota". What I thought was intriguing about the katakana use was why "Toyota", a Japanese word, was not written in hiragana. When I learned that brands usually write their names in katakana to emphasize their company name, it made more sense to me and I was able to see a trend in other brands' names written in katakana as well.
- Also, think why there are such effects/purposes.
Writing words in katakana does make the phrase stand out from the rest of the text, as intended. It is understandable as to why foreign words are converted into katakana, because using borrowed words in the hiragana form would cause confusion due to similar-sounding words. They function in a similar manner as do bolding and italics in English, allowing for emphasis and simplicity. Also, younger generations are more likely to write in Katakana than older generations, mainly because Katakana borrows many slang words from English, which gives it a less formal appearance than does Hiragana and Kanji.
- Think about why each textbook is different in explaining katakana, and why the textbooks explained katakana in the manners that they did.
My "Minna no Nihongo" book did an adequate job in explaining what katakana is and why is it used in the Japanese language. Each textbook explains the concept of katakana differently because more of a specific type of katakana (loan words, onomatopoeia, emphasis, etc.) However, my textbook did not go over in much detail as to what katakana was besides their uses in writing. This is probably because that there is not a definite explanation to explaining katakana, since they can be utilized in a myriad of methods.
Regarding the history of Katakana, this writing system was developed by Buddhist monks in order to simplify writing, which was originally mostly written in kanji/Chinese characters.
