カタカナ- Usage and Effects

I found a number of interesting katakana expressions from songs, movies, and newspapers, all of which I thought were loanwords from English. Some of these katakana words I found were:

フィーリング- feeling
Anime- Prince of Tennis

The character, Taka, has a tendency to become overexcited when he plays tennis, and yells about the atsui na fiiringu, as opposed to the atsui na kimochi, which would be the same length, so it cannot be explained by expediency. Maybe because I'm a native English speaker, the insertion of English phrases in places like this where Japanese would have served as well seemed funny and gave emphasis to his enthusiasm. In this case, random cries of English by someone without any special expertise in it add humor.

ラブ- love
Song- Perfect Blue- Angel of Love- コイのてんし

In this song's chorus, the girl group sings ai ga rabu rabu, suru nara, 愛がラブラブするなら, a curious phrase that stuck out to me, and one that is used in this context as a reason to seek out love and romance- since love is love/loving... That would suggest to me that "rabu" has a different definition here than "ai," an interesting gradation of meaning, especially since "koi" is already present in the Japanese vocabulary to describe a different type of love, as in the title of the song. Whether "rabu" corresponds more to "koi" or "ai," I think katakana expressions can take on different meanings or implications than their literal translations, and thus can be used in contrast to the Japanese words that would be their literal meaning, as in this case.

プライド
Movie- Pride- プライド

I saw this shoujo movie, based on the manga of the same title, at the NY Asian Film Festival this summer. The movie followed the story of two young women who were aspiring singers and rivals, and the title was this katakana word, which was also used in songs in the movie, like "Pride- A Part of Me," in which the girls sing about "hontou no puraido"- real pride. Obviously since this is a loanword it is naturally written in katakana, but the choice to use puraido instead of kenshiki, gougan, jiman, or any of a number of other possible Japanese titles is interesting. From looking in the dictionary for "pride" in Japanese, I would say that there seems to be a greater number of possible words for the same concept in Japanese with different implications, from "triumph" to "boast" or "self-respect," which are all contained within the one English word pride. While the Japanese words separate out the positive and negative aspects of pride, the English word contains both the good and the bad side, a struggle of meaning which is reflected in the movie's plot, where Stephanie's character is bound by her pride. Pride is a guiding principle to her which signifies integrity and self-respect, but other characters criticize her for really just being stuck-up and conceited. From an English speaker's perspective, it seems that the English word reflects this ambiguity better than one Japanese word could.

Each textbook is different in explaining katakana because the expressions fall into a number of different categories, as in when we tried to categorize our found expressions. Katakana is a flexible form, and some words can be only written in katakana, as in loanwords, while sometimes plain Japanese words can be written in katakana instead of the usual hiragana, as in lyrics sheets, for emphasis or to change meaning. Katakana was also used differently in past times than now, and seems to have adapted to fit the needs of a changing society, as in when Japan opened up to German/European and then American influence to such an increased extent. The presence of an alphabet to integrate foreign characters itself shows the exceptional ability of the Japanese culture to take concepts and ideas from other cultures and absorb them into their own, adapting them for their own usage and convenience. Because of this, I think there is no one right way to define katakana, and so every textbook is a different person's perspective on this varying history and unique characteristic of the Japanese.