Here are a couple of examples:
1. チャーハン(cha-han)in Japanese means fried rice, a food which is originally from China. The reason that this word is not written in kanji might have something to do with the time that it was introduced into the Japanese language, because while kanji is used for more ancient loanwords from China. チャーハンis quite recent (early 20th century maybe) and therefore it is written in katakana. Another possible reason is that チャーハン was borrowed from Cantonese, but Mandarin Chinese. 
2. コーヒー（ko-hi-) in Japanese means coffee. And it is quite easy to tell that コーヒー is a loanword from English (coffee). However strangely, we also see kanji version of コーヒー , though not very often. I tend to believe that this kanji version comes after the katakana version. It might be a import from Taiwan because in Taiwan, the same Chinese characters (珈琲) are used for coffee (in mainland China it is slightly different for some reason: it is written as 咖啡). Online source tells that some stores in Japan adopts 珈琲 rather than コーヒー for the sake of novelty.
Thank God I finally changed my blog to English.
Nice seeing you manage to change your blog to English :). And thanks for your post that is enlightening for me too.
ReplyDeleteRegarding cha-han, it is actually borrowed from Mandarin, since in Cantonese it is pronounce as chew-van, and in Mandarin it is chao-fan. The reason for using katana is not quite due to the time you described, since it was actually introduced into Japan in the Tang dynasty. Why they use katakana is to distinguish from the existence of yakimeshi(like yakisoba, baking xxx), which is a Japanese-adapted form of Cha-han since it was introduced into Japan by ambassadors. Compared to Cha-han, yakimeshi is much simpler in terms of process and materials, representing many of Japanese cuisines because of its historic lack of various ingredients.
The kanji of coffee is a form of ateji, referring to kanji used phonetically to represent native or borrowed words, without regard to the meaning of the underlying characters. Therefore it is rarely used due to the ease of remembering ko-hi- compared to 珈琲, if both words are merely resembling the sound. Also, it is not a import from Taiwan, but a Japanese translation made in 19th century by a Japanese scholar using phonetic method of translation, while the Chinese/Taiwanese versions rise as a result of imorting the word from Japan later around the beginning of last centry.
あぃがとう ございました！Thank you very much for your comments. It is really helpful but I am still sad that both my analyses are wrong haha. btw are you a Columbia student? Or instructor?
ReplyDeleteI'm a student in 4th-year Japanese course, and a Chinese for your information. We all made mistakes forever, but it's always good that you learn something from it isn't it?
ReplyDeleteIf you'd like to get in contact, my email is Fall.Monkey@GMAIL.COM :)
Hi Yuan! You've posted some interesting analysis. The word チャーハン can be written in Kanji 炒飯 as well, although it can be read as いためし. In some region, 炒めご飯 （いためごはん） is used instead of チャーハン. チャーハン has become a popular home dish in Japan as it is easy to make with leftover rice.
ReplyDeleteAlso, don't forget to summarize the different definitions or rules of カタカナ !
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