カタカナ Analysis (Final)

Hello again. Thank you to everyone for your feedback on my original analysis. Following is an updated version of my original text:


As a chemistry major, when I began considering how certain words would be written in Japanese, my thoughts immediately turned to all of the incredibly long, complicated names of organic compounds in chemistry. Because English is in many ways the official language of science, I figured that some names such as nitrosomethylurethane (which is actually fairly benign when it comes to chemical nomenclature) likely would never have to be written in any place other than a highly specialized journal that is published in English in the first place. If it were translated into Japanese, it seems obvious that it would simply be written in katakana. However, I was curious about compounds like say octane, a component in gasoline, or elements such as oxygen or germanium. Turning to Wikipedia (also as a true chemistry major-- multiple professors have told me that they feel that the best treatment of all but the most specialized and rigorous topics in chemistry can be found on Wikipedia), I found that オクタン and ゲルマニウム were written in katakana, while oxygen had its own kanji: 酸素（さんそ）.  Looking further, I found a Japanese language periodic table (http://www.ptable.com/?lang=ja) and did a more complete analysis.



Elements with at least one kanji in their name:
hydrogen, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, flourine, silicon, sulfur, chlorine, iron, copper, zinc, arsenic, bromine, silver, iodine, platinum, gold, mercury, and lead.

These seem to fall into two basic categories: 

A. What I would call major elements, especially in the field of organic chemistry: (H, C, N, O, F, Cl, S)

B. Common/precious metals (Au (gold), Ag (silver), Pt (platinum), Fe (iron), Cu (copper), etc.)

All of these elements seem "important" enough to have actual Japanese words for them (as opposed to maybe Tc, which doesn't actually exist in nature), so, it seems that with regards to chemistry the normal trend is followed: true Japanese words are written in kanji or hiragana while foreign words that must be borrowed are written in katakana. This is clearly out of simply necessity. No one can blame the Japanese for not having a traditional word for elements or compounds not discovered until the 20th-century, and, anyway, coming up with their own words and kanji for all these chemical species would be impractical at best and impossible at worst.

In another example, in a book in the manga series クレヨンしんちゃん (aside from the obvious loanword usage in the title) I found an example of the onomatopoeia キキッキ, used for laughter. I actually find this to be an example of a case where the use of different writing systems in Japanese is actually able to draw a relevant distinction, because onomatopoeia are fundamentally different than other words in English, yet have no obvious distinction in the written or spoken language. While "normal" words represent an abstract concept while remaining distinct from it, onomatopoeia such as meow are an imitation of that exact concept. It is an interesting distinction that I am sure Japanese people are much more aware of than other Westerners because of the use of katakana for onomatopoeia.

During the course of my analysis, I realized that in English we have a system kind of similar to katakana for loan words, at least at first. Words and phrases borrowed from other languages are frequently written in italics, like hoi polloi or joie de vivre. Over time, as English speaker grow familiar with them, the italics go away and they are considered to be normal English words.

In looking at the textbooks' explanations of katakana, I actually found remarkable consistency. Some left out the onomatopoeia aspect of the katakana, but that does not surprise me as that is relatively minor when it comes to overall usage. Especially when it comes to a foreigner attempting to learn Japanese, the use of katakana for loanwords is much more relevant to learning Japanese.

As a final thought, here is actually a postcard that my parents just sent me from Japan. It is kind of a joke because they know that my senior thesis project has to do with lithium and its potential use in nuclear fusion reactors (Japan is actually big into nuclear fusion research, but that is a story for another day...).