Timeline for Why is カラオケ (karaoke) written in katakana?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 25, 2015 at 12:10 | comment | added | firtree | There are also words like 歯ブラシ or バス停 which mix different writing styles. | |
| Apr 23, 2015 at 19:40 | comment | added | AHelps | So oke was borrowed from English to Japanese, and the resulting word "karaoke" was borrowed form Japanese back to English. So it's a true round-trip double borrowing :). There aren't too many words like this, and I love running across them. | |
| May 18, 2014 at 7:01 | comment | added | Eiríkr Útlendi | Note that this kind of construction seems to be considered as non-standard and slangy, possibly amusingly so (such as possibly クッキングる). | |
| May 18, 2014 at 7:00 | comment | added | Eiríkr Útlendi | And スタバる. Actually, this 外来語 + る construction does appear to be somewhat productive. Other examples seem to include ドライブる, ダンスる, コンビニる, and I'm sure others are out there too. | |
| Mar 29, 2014 at 4:18 | comment | added | Kaji | ググる is another example I've seen in this vein (amusingly, the IME didn't even need any fancy tricks—it picked right up on it). | |
| Feb 20, 2014 at 17:40 | comment | added | Sjiveru | Yeah, the mix does have to do with this weird non-standard する-less verbalisation. -る here is very much a separate morpheme from the root of the verb (the part written in katakana), though it's still part of the word enough for such a word to be considered mixed. I don't know if -every- verb created with this -る is slang, but all of the ones I've ever seen are. | |
| Feb 19, 2014 at 8:59 | vote | accept | drfrogsplat | ||
| Feb 19, 2014 at 5:10 | comment | added | ssb | @snailplane This is true! I meant that comment more as an appendix on サボる specifically and not as a refutation of the point that slang words can be mixed. | |
| Feb 19, 2014 at 4:56 | comment | added | user1478 | @ssb True, though there are similar examples that are entirely made in Japan, like モテる or ズレる. | |
| Feb 19, 2014 at 4:32 | comment | added | ssb | サボる is an interesting example of a phenomenon kind of related to this. While I don't think it's really wrong, I don't think it's entirely accurate to say the mix is necessarily related to its slanginess. サボる comes from the word サボタージュ, or sabotage, which is French (though it may have entered Japanese through English). So what we're seeing is the 動詞化, or verbification, if you will, of loan words, similar to ググる (to google) or パニクる (to panic), both of which take the hiragana ending for the purposes of inflection. | |
| Feb 19, 2014 at 3:05 | history | answered | Sjiveru | CC BY-SA 3.0 |