レムネ Ramune
ピンポンピンポーン Pinponpinpooon.
The first term, ラムネ、I thought it was just a name for a very delicious japanese soda. Or maybe, I thought, it wasn't Japanese since the name was in カタカナ. But さとうせんせい enlightened me to the fact that ラムネis a perpetuation of the word Lemonade, Lemonade eventually became Ramune or ラムネ。 Which is funny, because I think the soda tastes like bubblegum.
As for ピンポーン、I used to read a lot of manga and I remember not understanding what the little leftover symbols were for. Now I see that they're little onomatopoeias, kind of like KA-POW in American comics. In this case the ピンポンピンポーンwas the sound of a doorbell repetitively ringing.
5 comments:
ジェシカさん、
I actuallly had the same reaction (also very recently!) when I learnt the origin of the word: ラムネ. It does not taste like lemonade at all!
But I also thought that these old-fashioned borrowed words from English sometimes have fairly good representations of the original English sounds. For example, imagine if a Japanese person who doesn't know English at all heard a word "lemonade" coming out of a mouth of an American person (pronouncing it very quickly), it sure does sound like "ラムネ！". Don't you think??
As for ピンポーン, I think it is a good onomatopoeia for the Japanese doorbells, but probably not for regular American ones... did you have a hard time figuring it out?
M.N.
はじめまして、なまえはJulioです。コロンビアだいがくのさんねんせいです。
I agree, katakana seems to just be used for all kinds of special cases and exceptions.
I didn't know ラムネ came from lemonade...I wonder if there's a lemon flavored one that was the original?
ピンポン,believe it or not, is also used to denote that someone is correct. Like on a trivia show when they sound a bell when someone gives the correct answer. My sensei made the sound after I answered a question in class once and I was royally confused at the time.
はじめまして。My name is NOZOMI KUGA.
I'm a Japanese university student. I go to Bunkyo University now.
I read your Katakana Analysis, and I think, it's very interesting!Katakana normally express onomatopoeias and loan words. But sometime we use Katakana deliberately when we want to say more friendly.
I agree with you Jessicaさん, there are no real 'rules' for using カタカナ but there does seem to be a pattern of usage relating to onomatopoeia and loanwords. I guess as we become more and more able to read Japanese written-work, we will learn more about its usage.
ーイアン
どこでラムネをかいますか？interesting flavor ...
レムネ, maybe, but i probably wouldn't have guessed ラムネ=lemonade. it's good to know, though! i love saying the katakana words over and over until they make sense.
Post a Comment