Talk:Katakana

Edits by Ryoske

The recent edits by Ryoske seem to be speculation not based on any facts. Further, several of his/her statements are extremely dubious. For example, the stuff about "gomi" being because of Japanese people associating litter with foreigners sounds like utter drivel to me. For the time being, I've commented out the problematic paragraph.--DannyWilde 06:59, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the passage is highly speculative, and rather dubious. There are many opinions as to why words are being katakanaized. Some people just say it makes them eye-catching and "cool". The sentence: "The established use of katakana as being to write foreign loanwords has become somewhat of a myth spread through overly simplistic explanation of its usage in education of Japanese as a second language." is nonsense. The use of katakana for loanwords was set by the education ministry 60 years ago. Nothing mythical about it. --JimBreen 23:37, 26 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Is there anything in the paragraph that can be salvaged into something useful, or should it just be deleted? At the moment it is commented out, since it doesn't make much sense, but Wikipedia asks to modify things rather than delete them. Can it be modified into something worth saying? Or should it just be removed?--DannyWilde 00:50, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

I don't deny it was officially established as being used for loanwords. But what I mean is that when Japanese is taught as a second language, the bread-and-butter rules are taught that hiragana is used for native words, and katakana for foreign loanwords. The "myths" of the Jōyō Kanji list are described in that article, so why shouldn't the "only used for foreign words" misunderstanding not be considered a myth? What I should have written is that, although katakana is mostly used for foreign words, other usages include:...--Ryoske 07:05:45, 2005-08-27 (UTC)

I can't find any support for anything you added to the katakana article. See sci.lang.japan newsgroup for a discussion about your article. I don't like deleting stuff without a very good reason, but your comments in the katakana article seem highly dubious and speculative to me.

You mean that all my edits were bad?! Ouch. That paragraph wasn't the only edit I made - I added in the comment about Modern Chinese loanwords, the stylistic purposes as well as the use of the chōon in ローソク. But I forgot to tag them - my bad. I only joined yesterday, so I haven't entirely gotten used to things yet. Also, sorry about that stupid gomi comment - I heard someone speculate that on a message board, I think it was Japan Today. I found this Japanese article today suggesting as to why gomi is written in katakana: [1] It basically suggests that it is written in katakana to highlight that it is dirty, smelly, dangerous and otherwise unpleasant. 兎に角、出々しで躓いて済みません!--Ryoske 10:02:03, 2005-08-27 (UTC).

I've read the sci.lang.japan thread. I have had a native Japanese speaker suggest that 椅子 is considered a foreign object.

I'll take care not to write such baseless speculative comments in future.

I've found another Japanese article [2] which supports the argument that in the absence of kanji, writing words in katakana makes them easier to read.--Ryoske 05:58:55, 2005-08-28 (UTC)

Sorry to cut the colons short. I think that is true. The problem is about the foreign nature of gomi or isu. Anyway, why don't you try to salvage what you wrote in the light of other people's comments, and maybe something useful will come from this discussion.--DannyWilde 06:37, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

I've just attempted to salvage the "nutty" paragraph in light of all your comments. I've added those two sources in, some examples of katakana in verbs and adjectives, and gotten rid of the stupid ゴミ comment as well as the stuff about タバコ, as I thought it was unnecessary. On another note, I wonder if I should get rid of those examples of Chinese loanwords using katakana? I'm sure there's a list of Chinese and Korean loanwords already, but I just can't find it.--Ryoske 10:20:27, 2005-08-28 (UTC)

While we're on the topic of speculative and improbable bits, where did this come from? "In this case they may indicate 'words spoken with a foreign accent'." adamrice 15:15, 27 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, Ryoske added most of the paragraph back again. I really do not think he is correct. I moved the examples he gave into "emphasis". Incidentally Ryoske made some edits to the kanji page as well, some of which I disagree with. The characters in "gaiji" may translate to "external characters" but I have a lot of doubts whether "gaiji" are called "external characters". The only links I found on the web which supported that view were links to Wikipedia or copies of it. Also, Ryoske edited the hiragana page, but I'm not sure whether I agree with his edits there. These pages are fairly mature and it would be good to be cautious about adding lots of stuff to them. In the case of "gomi" I think it's just being used for emphasis - I haven't seen any evidence of anything else. Anyway I expect this will all get changed back again, but I'd like to register a protest about it. --DannyWilde 23:19, September 2, 2005 (UTC)

Actually, "external characters" is exactly how Ken Lunde refers to gaiji in his authoritative book Understanding Japanese Information Processing, so I don't have a problem with that. The rest of it, yes. The Japan-related pages in Wikipedia have for some time had the mixed blessing of contributors with more enthusiasm than scholarship. adamrice 13:56, 3 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your input. This is going into the realms of nitpicking, but I have a copy of the same book, and I found that Ken Lunde used the term, but he says that "These are referred to here as external characters". He doesn't say "These are called external characters". So it seems to be his translation. Can you find anyone else who uses the term? I had a rapid web search, but the only references to "external characters" I found were copies of the Wikipedia kanji page. Further, I found "gaiji" being used in romaji in some fairly solid web resources. Actually even Ken Lunde himself uses it on the next page of his book! I don't think there is enough justification for the "external characters" translation to put it into the kanji page. --DannyWilde 00:25, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

Older comments follow

All of these characters except VA ヷ, VI ヸ, VE ヹ, VO ヺ, and Katakana middle dot ・ are showing up in my browser. Anyone have any suggestions? --Koyaanis Qatsi

(Originally I listed the incorrect characters above, and 63.192.137.xxx corrected them. Thanks. --Koyaanis Qatsi)

You should as well indicate the Operating system and Web browser you are using... -- HJH

The characters VA, VI, VE, VO are included in the Unicode standard but they are not in the "traditional" Katakana set. Apparently, they are new characters added to the Japanese language (any Japanese native to confirm this?), that may explain why the browser fails to display them until the fonts are updated with the new glyphs. On my IE 5.5, the missing characters are shown as dots, but they are different from the middle dot ・ character.

I'm sure it's a matter of having the right fonts installed. I can see them all correctly, but I have the entire set of Chinese Han ideographic fonts installed. These few characters may not be present in some limited Japanese font set. Either get a more complete Japanese font, or bite the bullet and install the whole CJK set. --LDC

Ok, thanks. I had something I thought was a font set up, but everytime I went into a browser it brought up a window asking which keyboard set I wanted, and after that got tiresome enough I uninstalled it through DOS, since Windows wouldn't cooperate about it. --Koyaanis Qatsi

This table is quite confusing. Index (name) should be on the left, and value (symbol) on the right. Or at least column pair should be better separated, like in bold. Is there any particular reason why it's reversed ? --Taw

I'd also like to see the table reorganized. In the traditional Japanese layout ( begins in the upper right with A, with five kana per column ( A E U E O in the first column, KA, KI KU KE KO in the second, etc. ) This format does naturally group the kana with the beginning consonant sound, which is very helpful. Note that I wouldn't want to see this format exactly, just noting some things which seem helpful about it. I also prefer the Hepburn ( SA SHI SU SE SO, TA CHI TSU TE TO) romanizations, but that's a style decision. -- Olof

The table goes from right to left and from top to bottom , just as Japanese is written. The syllables "va, vi, ve, vu" are not traditional. They have been added to accomodate the Japanese version of foreign words. In fact, the only one I remember seeing is "vi," in "whiskey."

I don't understand this comment: In my browsers ( IE Mac OS 9 and IE Windows NT ) I see a table going from left to right. Furthemore, the contemporary kana representation of 'whiskey' is usually with U and small I : ウィスキー -- Olof

What are small KA and small KE use for ? --User:Taw

Small KE is used in some place names, even though it is usually pronounced 'ga'. For example, Kasumigaseki is written 霞ヶ関, Ichigaya is 市ヶ谷

Small KA is used in counting word combinations , i.e. to write ヵ月 to mean number of months or ヵ国 to mean number of countries. -- Olof

FYI The counter prefix ka Japman 09:17, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Recently some special characters have been added for transliteration of the Ainu language.

So, uh, what are they? --Brion 17:34 Feb 2, 2003 (UTC)

Katakana Phonetic Extensions Japman 09:17, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)

VA, VI, VE, and VO, as well as VU (ヴ), WI, and WE, are no more in use in Japanese (both hiragana and katakana). I believe they were dropped at the reform performed right after the World War II. Until that time katakana was used which every letters we now use hiragana for. -- Duckie

Actually, the "U+small vowel kana" spelling for WI and WE (ウィ, ウェ), the "U with handakuten" spelling of VU　(ヴ), and the "U with handakuten + small vowel kana" spelling for VA, VI, VE, and VO (ヴァ, ヴィ, ヴェ, ヴォ) are modern additions, used for foreign words. They shouldn't be confused with the stand-alone WI (ヰ) and WE (ヱ) kana, which are archaic. — Gwalla | Talk 22:11, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

FYI Re: About ヴ Japman 09:17, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)

uses of katakana

Beginning at some point in the mists of Japanese history, and lasting until some point in the 20th century (1945?--I'm not sure) katakana was used almost everywhere that hiragana is now--for okurigana, etc. I'm not sure about the history. Anyone have more specific information on this? I'd like to update this article to mention that.

I want to say that this began in the Meiji era and ended during the Allied occupation. It seems to be associated with the Imperial rule... all the laws, edicts, and the like from 1868 - 1945 are written in kanji and katakana, but traditional literature was written in kanji and/or hiragana. - Sekicho 19:55, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)

Imperial edicts are AFAIK still written in katakana... or at least the certificate of the Order of the Chrysanthemum (c. 1970-something) hanging on my dad's wall is. Jpatokal 11:50, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I concur with Sekicho. But I wonder why they did that. Is that because writing katakana is more efficient then hiragana? -- Taku 00:20, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)

Question about katakana on another page

Hello. Are all of the katakana in the last section of this page currently in use? I'm trying to compile a complete chart of kana and since they're not mentioned here, I was curious. Thanks!

There's some weird stuff on the page you reference (the "twa" and "kwa" lines, which I've never seen before, the "dexi" romanization for でぃ, which shows how to type the litte-e but is meaningless beyond that). I'd like to see some sightings of that stuff in the wild. BTW, you can sign your posts by typing for tildes in a row, like this (but without the spaces) ~ ~ ~ ~.adamrice 02:12, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

They repeated the main chart a lot. The only new ones they have is kw (qw is a bad romanization) and tw — and they're really only used to note silence in pronunciation, not actually form new words (e.g. クィーン [kwiin] instead of クイーン [kuiin]]). This can be done on all, so it's redundant listing these — and you should probably refer to wiki's chart, as they missed a few. --Blade Hirato 02:55, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, folks. One more, if you don't mind: What the heck are "dexyu" and "uxo" and the others? I tried a Google search and got almost nothing. I strongly suspect they're something nonstandard, but I've been wondering that for a while. Domo! -- J44xm 02:41, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

I have no idea! Fg2 03:33, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

Dexyu is デュ, pronounced dyu. Uxo is ウォ, wo (large u, small o, used because the kana "wo" is pronounced "o.") Sekicho 03:47, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

Sekicho, thanks for that information. Do you know where that romanization comes from? And whether it's actually in widespread use? I know the pronunciation, but I've never seen the letters "dexyu" before. I cannot imagine any speaker of English or any western European language saying dyu when they read the letters dexyu so I wonder who devised it. Fg2 03:53, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

That's how it would be typed into an input method editor. Since there's no "x" in Japanese, IME's interpret "x" to mean "make the next kana small." That's not how a sane person would romanize it. Sekicho

Now it makes sense! Thanks Fg2 06:01, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

Additions needed

Right, I've made a couple of minor alterations, includinding mentioning uses of katakana in furigana. I was tempted to add examples X (エックス) or 逆説 (パラドクス) and such, but really those belong on the furigana page... which is such a *lovely* big block of text, I have no idea where to put them.

Also, the uses section mentions 'Names of animal and plant species', but not other technical fields where you'd often see loanwords... the elements come to mind, ネオン and such.

In giving the table it's own heading, I realised what the page realy needs though is an equivalent of the Hiragana writing system section. Transcribing English to Japanese covers that direction quite well (though needs finishing), but nothing on this page really gives an idea what english (and to a lesser extent other languages) word you'd expect a katakana borrowing to be. As the table lists 'vi' as ヴィ it would be rather a surprise to find that it's generally rendered as ビ for japanese speakers. -- Martin 20:17, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Possible external link?

Hi. I have a site with a Flash katakana writing tutor:

http://www.japanese-name-translation.com/site/write_katakana.html

Would this be a useful external link for this page? (I am new to editing Wikipedia, so I thought I should run it by you guys and see what you thought.) If you think it is good, would someone add it?

Accessibility

Hooray for colourblindness, or something. I suppose this is a broader issue than just this article, but how about denoting obsolete characters with ^† rather than colour. The same goes for table columns being green and yellow. Colour shouldn't be used to convey information other than information about colour, or aesthetics. My two cents. See http://www.webaim.org/techniques/visual/colorblind

Chinese Words

In the introductory section, it says it is used for transcription of non-chinese words. I believe that is incorrect, since the on reading of kanji is often written with katakana. Please correct me if I am wrong. --Weyoun6 20:39, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You are right that by convention, kunyomi are written in hiragana and onyomi in katakana. But the article has the general spirit of katakana's usage correct. It would be misleading and hypercorrect to mention right at the top that katakana is used to represent Chinese-derived words, when in fact it is only used that way in dictionaries, a relatively trivial fact about katakana. I say let it stand. adamrice 16:17, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Why not just have an aside that says "Katakana may be used for pronuciation of the onyoumi of kanji in dictionaries"? --Weyoun6 00:36, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Also "non-Chinese foreign languages" is misleading, loans from *modern* chinese may bewritten in katakana, just not historical borrowings. --zippedmartin 05:32, 27 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Remark on viewing katakana

What does the parenthetical remark "otherwise visit the page for hiragana" at the top of the section Hepburn romanization of katakana refer to? As far as I can see, the hiragana article also requires Japanese fonts to be installed. -- Jitse Niesen 18:14, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Don't understand "computer" modification

The most recent modification says that katakana are used to write technical terms etc. but surely this is already covered by the use for gairaigo? Does it mean that katakana are used for tech. terms where the word could be written in kanji? That is news to me. Otherwise, this entry is pointless and should be blasted. Unless anyone enlightens me otherwise, I'll remove the entry completely. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.220.243.72 (talk) 09:06, 1 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, though I know almost no Japanese, so I've reverted that edit. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 18:13, 3 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Please no speculation

Please don't use these pages to speculate or postulate your own theories about katakana usage. This was exactly the problem with Ryoske's edits. It is clear enough that words like "gomi" or "megane" are written in katakana on signs for emphasis. --DannyWilde 00:10, 8 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]