Words: ゲロゲロ>Ribbit、ビカビカ>Shine
These two Katakana words are both onomatopoetic. It is interesting to see how Japanese onomatopoeia differ across cultures. Gerogero, for example, sounds nothing like ribbit, the onomatopoeia for frog sounds in English. This difference shows that Katakana can be used for distinctly Japanese ideas, as opposed to simply for loanwords. At the same time, however, onomatopoeia are different for actually Japanese words that have a defined sound. They are more similar to approximations of sounds, and it seems that Katakana can accept a larger degree of pronunciation and sound than are typicially formed in Hiragana or Kanji. Also, it is interesting to see that a word like "shine" has a onomatopoeia because it does not in English, nor is the sound of shining similar to bikabika. This probably come as a reflection of Japanese culture either in popular times or historically. Does anyone know when these words came in to the langauge?
-ジェフリー
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I think you hit a really interesting point in asking where the onomatopoeia come from...and while I don't know historically when the words came into the language, I do know that sound-words are used much more frequently as a natural part of Japanese speech than they're used in English. My feeling is that the differences in the way that the sounds come across in english and japanese have to do with the fundamental differences in language and culture that relate to how we perceive sound-words' function as we use them.
ReplyDeleteWhen onomatopoeia are used in english, I think it tends to put a certain emphasis on the fact that it's a sound (BOOM, fizzle, etc.), whereas in japanese they function as natural adjectives/adverbs/verbs without any special emphasis. If that is the case, then writing the word in katakana may give it that special sound emphasis that english onomatopoeia naturally carries.
このポストはとてもおもしろかったと思います！ ありがとう！
ジェイソン
A friend of mine actually did a research on
ReplyDeletethe history of Japanese onomatopoeia, specifically for those animal sounds.
If you are interested, I can ask her to email you the paper.
I am not sure if it was a typo,
but isn't shine pronounced as ピカピカ
instead of ビカビカ？
But it leads you to another interesting
question like "Is there any seemingly difference between voiced sound katakana
and voiceless sound katakana?"
You might also wanna ask a question like
"Do the readers feel different impressions if te shining was pronounced with /b/ sound instead of with /p/ sound?"
これからもがんばってください！
Hello! My name is Kana.
ReplyDeleteNice to meet you!
I'm a Bunkyo University's student in Japan.
I'm interedsted in your thought.
So, I'll introduce other onomatopoeia.
☆Hopping sound: ピョンピョン（Pyong pyong)
When we see the hopping rabbit or people,we often use it.
,,,Sorry I can not use English and well.(;_;)
べんきょうがんばってください！
わたしも英語のべんきょうがんばります。
またコメントしにきますね♪
おはよSK、
ReplyDeleteこのレポートはおもしろいです。わたしにレポートおおくりませんか。
どうもありがとござさいます。
ジェフ