フィレオフィッシュ - "fish fillet"
"fish"は日本語で「さかな」って言ますけど、マクドナルドのメニュは「フィッシュ」っと言います。とてもおもしろいですね。日本で、アメリカの言葉方が日本語の言葉よりクールですね。
On the McDonald's menu, there is a katakana expression for "fish" rather than the native Japanese word "sakana." Certainly this emphasizes the foreign feel of McDonald's to Japanese customers. McDonald's also tried to look cool in its American commercials, so perhaps they use the katakana to look cool to the Japanese. In fact, their entire menu is in katakana. Americans too use foreign phrases to sound sophisticated, such as "vice versa", "c'est la vie", and "veni vedi vici."
Another possibility for using katakana is too sound more natural. Some phrases just don't translate well into other languages, so keeping the foreign pronunciation makes it seem normal. Japanese and English are such different languages that I'm sure this happens often. I wonder if a native Japanese speaker would be offput at the prospect of buying an うれしいごはん instead of a ハッピセット (that's "Happy Set" or "Happy Meal")。
「どんどん」
英語で"quickly"
This is a Japanese sound to represent the feeling of "quickly." It's not strictly speaking onomatopoeia, but it's classified as "Gitagio 擬態語" in Japanese. You can use your imagination to figure why this sound is "quickly." It can sound like footsteps running or a heart beating quickly. The word sound more personal and friendly than a standard Japanese word. For example, in English "tic tac" sounds more personable than "candy" or "sweet tablet."
The textbooks from class emphasize different uses of katakana. They all of course mention its use for writing foreign loan words and names. One textbook mentions its fashionable appeal, and another mentions its use in onomatopoeia. Presumably, the explain it in different ways because they use different katakana in each book, and so the author needs to explain katakana differently so the reader will understand.
おもしろいですね。
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you on the "fish fillet" analysis, with the use of カタカナ/foreign words to seem "cool" and "exotic". I'm not so sure about the differences between textbooks, though.
”どんどん”はどこにありますか。
Glad that you mentioned about "Gitagio 擬態語".
ReplyDeleteI think 「どんどん」is onomatopoeia and also "Gitagio 擬態語" .
どんどん しごとを してください。
This sentence means "Please do your work quickly /rapidly" .
たいこが どんどん なる。
This sentence means "Drum sounds "Dam Dam"".
※"fish"は日本語で「さかな」って言ますけど、マクドナルドのメニュに言は「フィッシュ」ってです。⇒"fish"は日本語で「さかな」って言いますけど、マクドナルドのメニューでは「フィッシュ」です
※アメリカの言方が日本語の言よりクールですね。⇒ごめんなさい、ちょっとわかりません。The way of saying in US is cooler than the way of Japanese･･･という いみですか？
私は"魚"のKataganaワードの分析には同意します。それは非常に説得力がある!
ReplyDeleteI like the point you bring up about the use of Katakana in McDonalds. It didn’t really occur to me until now that English also uses foreign phrases for the “coolness” factor that comes with them. I think it is interesting to note that Katakana can be used not only for words that are actually foreign in nature, but also to convey a sense of “foreignness.”
ReplyDeleteI like how you brought up that English has its own "katakana." I wonder what English would be like if it had 2 writing systems too. It definitely makes sense for McDonald's, since katakana can be "fresh" sounding.
ReplyDeleteそれから、フィレオはおいしいね？
I think the analysis of the McDonald is really convincing. McDonald sure wants their food to feel "American" and make its orders' names accordingly.
ReplyDeleteI am not really sure what "Gitagio" is. If you can explain to me more that would be really nice.
このアナリシスは いいですね。
ワンサヌワット
Your analysis was good and interesting, especially how you mention that English speakers also import loanwords from other languages and use them as well. The McDonald's example was also interesting, but do you think the katakana could possibly be there, not necessarily for the coolness factor, but to connect more to the Japanese people? Japan knows that McDonald's is foreign, so writing the menu in hiragana or even kanji would seem really weird and maybe even invasive to them, so they chose katakana instead of even romaji because even though Japanese people can understand romaji to a certain extent, McDonald's wants to insert itself into Japanese culture like it has in America. Therefore, the first step to doing so would be to appear as much Japanese as politely possible, at least in the beginning. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting you bring up that English also imports a bunch of foreign expressions even when equivalent English expressions already exist. It gives the impression of being exotic, perhaps cultured. Until now I didn't realize America also had this phenomenon. I think it's especially well carried-out in Japan because of the existence of another writing system that just happened to be there and was easily employable for importing foreign words. Perhaps because katakana facilitated the process, that's why there are so many foreign expressions natural to the Japanese language today, as compared to in other countries.
ReplyDeleteI really like the McDonald's example. I agree that it could do with a coolness factor, but also, somehow saying 「魚のフィレ」feels... wrong. Even though "fish" and "魚" indicate the same food item, it's almost like the idea of "fish" in English is so different from the idea of "魚" in Japanese (Maybe because the ways Americans vs. Japanese people eat fish are so different? Japanese people trying to keep their food culture preserved as separate from American food culture?) that「魚のフィレ」ceases to be filet o' fish. It'd be interesting to see if this fits other examples as well!
ReplyDeleteカタカナは色々な使い方があって、おもしろいですね！
I agree with hikaipie about the fish - when I think of 魚 I think about the fish that we grill whole at home and eat with rice and miso soup, and picking the bones out with (usually my fingers but preferably) chopsticks. That experience is completely different from McDonalds fast food and the Filet-O-Fish burger.
ReplyDeleteAnd on the McDonald's menu, I don't think it's fish filet. The commercial name for it is Filet-O-Fish.
I think that's actually an example of use of foreign languages in English, because filet comes from French, and "au" (here transcribed as O) means something along the lines of "in the style of." It's grammatically wrong in this case, but maybe it adds a coolness factor.
You're absolutely right to point out katakana and its fashionable appeal. Though I do think it just plays on different sentiments - too much katakana could be looked down upon, as not knowing their language. (There's a famous comedian who plays a lot on that, I forgot his name though.) But especially in clothes and food, there's a lot of katakana. I find that with clothes the katakana is usually à la française and in food it's à l'italienne but that's very stereotypical =]
I think the McDonald's example is a particularly good/interesting one because there are a couple of different factors going on. On the one hand, there is the whole cool/emphasizing the foreignness of カタカナ, plus there is also the fact that if they had used さかな or some other Japanese word for fish, they would have lost the alliteration of fish fillet. Good work!
ReplyDeleteおおの