Katakana analysis final

Instead of restating what I already put in my draft, I am just going to make some broader conclusions referring back to my original examples. I don't really have any corrections to make to my draft.

I think the most fascinating thing about katakana is that it shows language in motion. In western languages we have all sorts of loan words adopted over the years, many of which we have forgotten are loan words, maybe because we don't write them in a separate alphabet. For example, many English words are actually loan words from French dating back to the Norman conquest and the forced use of French in the court and in legal documents. That's why we have redundant phrases like "aiding and abetting": one is from the French and one is from the Anglo-Saxon tradition. Both were used to ensure everyone would understand. It's also why we say, for example, "Tort law." The examples are endless--I've readed that up to a third of English is actually derived from Norman/French loan words. 

 

And of course, French is derived from all sorts of borrowed words from Latin, Celtic, and Germanic languages, not to mention the more recent influx of English words. And yet, if we look at French now, there is an institutional obsession with the purity of the language and stemming the flow of English words like "E-mail" and "stereo" into modern French. The Académie française strictly defines what is considered a French word and what is not. And they are known to refuse loan words, like "E-mail" and replace them with artificially Frenchified words, in this case "courriel" taken from the Quebecois. They actually fine companies and institutions that use the word "e-mail" in official documents. Most people still say e-mail. http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2003/07/59674

 

 

The Académie Française. It's imposing.

 

Now, why do I make this long digression? Because I think the most fascinating thing about katakana is that it creates a unique liminal space where loan words are indicated as such, but allowed to enter the language and begin the long process of Japaneseification. We've already seen words that seem pretty close to their English equivalent, like "シナモン", as well as words that have been modified such that we don't recognize them at first, like ”パソコン.” When do they stop being loan words? When do they become Japanese words? Thanks to three writing systems, reading Japanese is watching linguistic history in the making.

My second and third examples, 皮フ科 and the postal 〒, also show linguistic history in the making, but in different ways. In the first case, you see the official standardization of kanji  in for example 1981 with joyo kanji, the official 1945 characters established by the Ministry of Education. In the second example, you see the shifting use of the katakana alphabet itself over history. The postal mark is not from a loan word; rather, it is a historical trace leading us back to a time when literacy was less common and katakana was more widespread. It also shows how characters can make the long trek from ideograms (kanji) to phonemes (or in hiragana and katakana's case, syllabaries--symbols representing syllables) to an ambiguous mark that could be syllabary or ideogram, but is probably closest to a brand, like the McDonalds "M" arch, but with more history and less cynical corporate machinations behind it.

At first when we started learning katakana, I was frustrated: why are there two alphabets? Why does it have to be so complicated? Why can't they just write everything in hiragana. Now I am beginning to appreciate how katakana opens the Japanese language to outside influences in a way that, for example, official French is incapable of doing. At the same time, it seems to protect a core of Japanese words with their origins in very old Chinese loan words and innovations particular to the Japanese archipelago. it will be really interesting to see what katakana words are eventually written in hiragana or even kanji and how this decision occurs.