かたかな Analysis

As I have shown in the examples from my かたかな Analysis Draft, as a cursory rule, かたかな is used in three situations: loan words, onomatopoeic words, or emphasized words.  Moreover, I noted how this general rule fails to encompass many exceptions.  There are words that cannot definitely be categorized under any of these three broad categories, but are still written in かたかな; there are even words that don't fall into any of these categories, but are still written in かたかな.


Several of my classmates have pointed out interesting facts about かたかな that I did not notice when I wrote my draft.  For example, ペンさん noticed the aesthetic difference between ひらがな and かたかな, and hypothesized ( I think, very smartly) that, because of かたかな sharper edges, it is more suitable for print.


The comments from 四年生のがくせい I found particularly helpful.  ケイトさんとフリオさん explained that かたかな is often used to make something seem more modern or cool.  ジイさん shared her experience Japan, where she says that more than 50% of the words on a prescription are written in かたかな, even when they have corresponding かんじ.  As ジイさん explains, this is probably to make these prescriptions fool-proof; this way, people who are not very educated will still understand the prescriptions.  アナさん further added to ジイさん's comment by noting that even educated politicians have trouble reading かんじ at times.  This shows us that かたかな is not just used as a stand-in for かんじ for less educated people - educated people benefit from this as well.


Finally, both ジイさん  and アナさん raise interesting questions Japanese writing systems in general.  ジイさん talks about how sometimes a かんじ word would be written ひらがな, because it is hard to read otherwise; ジイさん also agreed with ケイトさんとフリオさん that sometimes a word is written in かたかな just to make it seem cooler.  ジイさん gives a very good example for this: "綺麗" is difficult to read, so may be written simply in ひらがな as "きれい." To make this cool, one can write this as "キレイ."  Meanwhile, アナさん remarked that this use of  ひらがな to write かんじ is much more common than the use of かたかな to write かんじ.


Once again, I have to conclude that there seems to be no sure way to account for all the uses of かたかな.  Nevertheless, I found the comments to my earlier post very helpful to helping me better understand the use of かたかな.  I hope you find them helpful too!