ふゆ休み

私のふゆ休みはたのしかったですが、おもしろくなかったです。せかい、ごめねさい！

毎日ひとりでてつ学の本をよんで、ねました。

かぞくはユダヤですから、クリスマスにおい子と Chinatown へたべにいきました。このビデオをとりました。これはニューヨークのユダヤひとのトラディションです。おい子はとてもかわいいです。

ヅレちゃんははしが上手ですね。。。

１２月２６日からほんとにへやからどこへも行きませんでした。でも、へやでエーリアンとあいました。へやのワープはべんりです。

Katakana Analysis

My first katakana sample is from the Meguro Parasitological Museum (目黒寄生虫館, めぐろきせいちゅうかん）. Yup, you read that correctly. Meguro is an area of Tokyo vaguely associated with the healthcare industry and medicine. There you will find a museum devoted to cataloging parasites and  the lucky hosts they inhabit. (Picture intestines preserved in formaldehyde bursting with bright red worms. Happy Halloween.) 

My brochure from there features a framed tapeworm on it. The description beneath the picture uses サナダムシ to describe the parasite. “Sanadamushi” is neither a loanword nor an onomatopoeia. This use of katakana is also not in our catch-all category of emphasis, because other crawly things in the brochure were referred to using Kanji. むし means bug and is normally written with the kanji 虫 -- just as it sounds, it is a word native to Japan. さなだ means braid and is written using the kanji 真田. So why isn't it 真田虫? My first instinct was that perhaps they thought the subject matter isn't dignified enough to be given kanji status, but that seems incorrect. This museum wasn't built from revulsion, but instead LOVE. 

I am not sure if I have a satisfying answer yet, but I have been doggedly researching the Japanese etymology of サナダムシ. It turns out that (according to the Japanese Wikipedia entry on Tapeworm) サナダムシ is a relatively new word. In ancient Japan they used to call tapeworms "寸白" . The second ideogram means white (しろ）, but the first one even though it looks simple has been difficult to translate. It wasn't even in my dictionary! It is used in measurements (e.g. 寸法記入,すんぽうきにゅう) and the verb “to rip apart” (寸断, すんだん). It is also used in the adjective eloquent (三寸, さんずん) and a word for the phenomenology of being (胸三寸, むねさんずん). 寸 is an interesting character even if I can't pinpoint what it expresses. So now my hypothesis is that katakana is used because "サナダムシ" replaced an older phrase, “すんしろ”, and is thus more 'foreign'.

(My second sample wasn't as fascinating to me. It comes from the November 2009 issue of Vogue Nippon. Tao Okamoto is a Japanese model from Chiba. The featured article chooses to spell her name as タオ　オカモト　(or just TAO) and not 多緒 岡本. This katakana rendering of Japanese names in fashion isn't uncommon. Maybe the angular script is more hip and minimalist.)

This brochure isn't a telegraph. The tapeworm isn't talking. And no author wants to stress any one phrase because all parasites are created equal. サナダムシ is distinctly Japanese. Textbooks really can only go so far. I think the truism "rules are meant to be broken" is applicable here. The samples we were shown give us a good start on where and how to use カタカナ (except, of course, none of them mentioned telegraphs). Just mentioning loanwords and onomatopoeia won't capture the full purview of カタカナ, but I still think it was helpful, especially the third sample which went into general history of Japanese script (hiragana was once おんなで -- おもしろいですね...). We would be hard pressed to find a concise rule for all the quirks in English... and who would want one anyway? 

Language is a living thing that evolves and feeds off of us!