Katakana Analysis Draft Final

Japanese loanwords from the Chinese language are usually written in kanji, but there are also cases where these words in written in katakana. Or sometimes, both katakana and kanji version of the same word exist, and one of these two versions is more often used.
Here are my two examples:

1. チャーハン (cha-han)
This word in Japanese means fried rice, a food which is originally from China. The peculiar thing about this word is that it is not written in kanji 炒饭, but in katakana. Since more ancient loanwords from Chinese in Japanese are written in kanji, my suspicion is that cha-han was only borrowed recently, maybe in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. But a commenter of my draft disagrees with this and insists that it was borrowed from China in ancient times. My another suspicion in the drafts is that the reason it is not written in kanji might be because it was not borrowed from Mandarin Chinese but Cantonese. But the same commenter points out that fried rice in Cantonese is read as chew-van, which is very different from cha-han. It is also interesting to know that Japan actually has its know fried rice, called やきそば, but it was more simple to make than Chinese fried rice. In the end, I still insist my belief that the reason cha-han is written in katakana not kanji today is that it was loanword borrowed from Mandarin Chinese in modern times.


2. コーヒー(ko-hi)
The word coffee can be written in Japanese in both katakana and kanji. However, it is more often written in katakana. The kanji for coffee is 珈琲. I suggested in my draft that this word might be an import from Taiwan because it was also written this way whereas in China, it is slightly different (咖啡). However, the commenter of my draft points out that it was Japan that actually coined 珈琲 first as atrji (words made into kanji based on their sounds), using phonetic method of translation The Chinese and Taiwanese versions are actually imported from Japanese. But it still remains a mystery that why the Chinese chose to alter the word a bit from  珈琲 to 咖啡. The katakana version of this word is often used in Japanese but the kanji version is used sometimes for the sake of novelty.


Function of katakana:
Although Different textbooks discuss differently on the function of katakana, most of them note that katakana is used for foreign loanwords and onomatopoeia. However, as my examples indicate, the use of katakana is actually more flexible than the textbooks tell. For example, as one of our handouts point out, the use of foreign words in the form of katakana can give a sense of novelty and sophistication. Therefore, sometimes even when native Japanese words fit the situations perfectly, these katakana words are still used. 

ko-hi-

cha-han