Hi,
I recently bumped into a Japanese-language tweet about a new snack, namely “Lotus Biscoff” topped with a biscuit by Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. This is nothing special, as Japan is the promised land of delicious seasonal snacks.
What caught my eye was the headline in Japanese:
クリスピー・クリーム・ドーナツ「ロータス ビスコフ」“ビスケット丸ごと1枚”トッピング
Any WaniKani student can see their kanji learning efforts swallowed by katakana. In fact, there is exactly one kanji / hiragana word (丸ごと from level 4) along with 枚, the flat object counter (level 18). And that’s it, as all the rest in that headline is katakana.
In Japanese, katakana is used for transcription of foreign-language words and the writing of loan words. In my opinion, nothing is more detrimental than katakana when it comes to for example the Japanese peoples’ much-commented lack of ability to actually speak English.
For example, “Krispy Kreme Doughnuts” in spoken katakana Japanese would sound something like “kurisupu kuriimu doonatsu”. In other words, katakana is literally a guide for how not to pronounce those words anywhere else than in Japan. Also, for foreigners it is pretty much impossible a task to decipher that for example “rootusu bisukofu” actually means “Lotus Biscoff” when written in Arabic alphabet.
And it doesn’t help that loan words are becoming ever more common in everyday Japanese. This is why if I was the language 帝, I would definitely deprecate katakana immediately. To me it is a language system actually preventing people from understanding each other, which is not the point of any language system in the first place.
But as these kind of reforms in Japan often take several decades, I would have no option meanwhile but to go eat at ピザハットand catch the latest マシュー・マコノヒー movie.
Before learning Japanese, I had no idea that we pronounce karaoke, karate, and wasabi wrong in English. Because I had never heard the correct Japanese pronunciation before. It’s the same for Japanese people with マクドナルド, スターバックス, and クリスピー・クリーム, these aren’t confusing to them because they’ve never heard McDonald’s, Starbucks, or Krispy Kreme before. As frustrating as it is for non Japanese people to watch their language get butchered and then told they’re saying it wrong, the truth is that katakana words aren’t meant for us, and once a word is imported to Japanese it becomes a Japanese word with Japanese pronunciation. Just as wasabi becomes wasabi, Krispy Kreme becomes kurisupi kurimu.
I’ve gotten fairly decent at deciphering katakana, but what the f-
Names are the one thing I’ll agree with you on. A name is an identity, so everyone, no matter what language, should do everything in their power to mimic a name’s pronunciation as best they can.
My view on this is that it’s only a misspelling/mispronounciation if you think these transliterated words are the same word and not a loan word inspired by the original word. Personally, to me, samurai is an English word derived from さむらい, so it having a different pronunciation is not that surprising. Similarly ビスケット is a Japanese word derived from biscuit, so it’s not surprising it has a different pronunciation.
Where else would you speak Japanese except for in Japan?
Basically Japanese doesn’t have the ability to replicate sounds it does not have. Japanese can’t string consonants together so I think they got it as close as they could with what they’ve got. The language is made of moras. It does it’s best for how far away from English it really is.
Speaking in another language takes effort, but also who’s stopping people who only speak English from mispronouncing Japanese words. “さけ” turns into Saki. カラオケ turns into Kayrioki, マンガ turns into Main ga. Heck, there are people who tell you you’re saying it wrong if you do the “correct” Japanese pronunciation. Doesn’t mean you’re wrong, it means what you’re saying isn’t getting through because that pronunciation has been adopted as the word where you are. Language is for communicating with people in that language. It works in Japan and Japanese is meant for people living in Japan and speaking Japanese, and they use カタカナ as an alphabet. Just because it can be difficult for them learning English in the long run, doesn’t mean they’re going to change the base functions of their language for foreigners
As difficult as it is to decipher カタカナ English as a fellow English speaker, I just got used to it via experience and encountering it in the wild a lot. Honestly this was one of the easier sentences as it’s all name translations. The 和製語 used in business settings throws me for a bigger loop as they attribute different/wider meanings to the words they’re saying.
This is interesting because in American English there’s a documented linguistic effect that if a word is a recent loan word (I mean not like “beef” which is a loan word from French but no one thinks of it as a loan word, but rather a more recent one like croissant, which everyone knows is French…)
Anyway, if a word is a loan word in American English, it has to be pronounced as though it’s foreign, but usually not pronounced too foreign, otherwise it’s not socially acceptable and everyone will think you’re a snob.
I love the idea of loan words coming into a language and being adapted into that language’s rules, I think it’s absolutely fascinating. Especially when it comes to how the word interacts with the native grammar.
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