In my previous lesson about Katakana, I listed down five situations when Katakana script is used over Hiragana or Kanji. In this post I would like to share some facts about 外来語 gairaigo.
Katakana is mainly used when writing loanwords or 外来語 gairaigo like スピーチ (speech)、トマト (tomato) or パーティー (party) in Japanese. All these words are adopted from English language.
English being a global language, most of the words that are written in Katakana are of English origin. What’s interesting is that, katakana words included non-English words too. . Let us learn some of these words.
| Katakana | Etymology | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| パン | Pan (Spanish) | Bread |
| アルバイト | Arbeit (German) | Part time job (in Japanese) Job (in German) |
| アンケート | Enquête (French) | Questionnaire |
| コンクール | Concours (French) | Competition or Contest |
| ブランコ | Balanço (Portuguese) | Swing |
| イクラ | икру or Ikru (Russian) | Red caviar |
| ピーマン | Piment (French) | |
| ズボン | Jupon (French) | Pants (in Japanese) Petticoat (in French) |
| レントゲン | Röntgenstrahl (German) | X-ray |