Anyone who wants to learn Japanese would have come across katakana (片仮名) system of writing. It is almost well known that it is used to script the foreign words / loanwords (gairaigo-外来語) in Japanese language. No doubt, it definitely helps a beginner to understand and differentiate between the original and loanwords while reading the Japanese sentences.
On the other hand, it throws up a bigger challenge of re-tracing the ‘original’ spelling of the loanword in its ‘original’ language. It is mainly because the writing system of Japanese cannot represent all the phonetic units of the loanword. For example, Japanese language has no equivalent phonetic units for the sounds of ‘c’, ‘d’, ‘l’ and ‘t’ in English. In reading, one can make out the loanword by katakana and strive to re-trace the original word and understand; but when it comes to spoken Japanese, the beginner is lost in the jungle ‘gairaigo’!
A foreign student who joined a literature course at some ‘tandai’ (短大 – junior college) in Japan was asked to learn Japanese. She was fun-loving as well as pun-loving and her friends admired her ability to learn Japanese using rhyming words. A Japanese friend asked “je-n chan, ‘buranko’ tte shiranaino?” (Jane, don’t you know what a ‘swing’ is?)
With a dramatic action, the gaijin started thinking aloud “are kana (Is it that) … kore kanaa (Is it this)… nihongo ja nai kanaa (It isn’t Japanese; is it?)… ah wakatta! yappari katakanaa… (Ah! I got it! It is katakana)” giving her usual naughty answer with a ‘kanaa’ pun.
And by the time she understood that ‘buranko’ (ブランコ) is the ‘refined’ form of ‘balanço’ of Portuguese, she was out of tandai! She still wonders why the most common thing like swing at a park does not have original Japanese word!
Another student Sarah still remembers an incident that happened the very next day she arrived. Her friends had planned a surprise visit to another friend Hanako’s place to wish her on her birthday. One of them asked Sarah in Japanese – English
“sara- chan, tsumaro- is Hanako’s ba-su de-, wiru you go?”
“Oh! Tomorrow is a bus-day? Sorry, but I’ve already bought train tickets.” came a quick reply!
Anyway, the friends tried their best to show her what is a ‘ba-su de-’ (バースデー), by enacting puffing a candle – “wan, tsu-, tsuri-, seino ooof” (One, two, three, let’s go for ooof) and finally she understood that it was a ‘birthday’ and had nothing to do with the city bus!
Alien students come across similar words and incidents which make their study more interesting and they learn Japanese with great fun and pun! After sometime, they get used to the katakana style and one can listen to their routine conversations in Japanese accents:
“maza-bo-do ga nai!” (There is no Mother board!)
“za ringu mita?” (Did you watch The Ring?)
“sankyu; chippu wa iranai” (Thank you; No need of tips)
And when a Japanese girl says “ai rabu yu” to her alien boy-friend, who knows katakana, he never wonders what she would rub him with. Instead, he definitely knows that she meant “I love you” and immediately he replies “ai rabu yu tsu-”!
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