I came across the word ダブる(= to be duplicated, repeat a year at school), which struck me as slightly odd, as it mixes katakana and hiragana within the same word.

I checked with my native speaker informant, and she immediately gave me that spelling, as does my electronic version of the Green Goddess.

So how common is this within-word kana mixing, and can you think of any other examples?

The only other one I found was トラブる　(=make trouble), which is same sort of thing - foreign loanword plus -る suffix to turn it into a verb.

This is simply how the grammar works, using る is just a grammar part, not the base word so it does not get katakanized the same way.

Dustin_Calgary Wrote:To add to that maybe make it more clear, the る is added AFTER katakanizing the foreign word in order to make it a verb

Thanks - I did realise that, but was wondering how productive it is - I just can't think of very many examples at all, which I guess it why it looks a bit odd...

I had editted that part out after realizing the second katakana word had an r ( l anyways ) sound at the end as well which i thought way lead to more confusion LOL

サボる is another common one (and interesting in that the loanword it comes from doesn't have the る sound in it). Also there's slang like マクる meaning 'to eat at McDonalds'. (I was told about that one five years ago now so no doubt it's seriously out of date by now )

The final section of the wikipedia page on サボる suggests that ダブる and サボる are basically the only ones in really common use, and that there aren't very many others.

I think it's suggestive that both ダブる (in one sense) and サボる are school-related words; I'd guess that they're both teenage slang words that made it into the big-time.

オナる (= to jerk off) was in 時をかける少女, so I'm surprised no one mentioned it considering how many people subs2srsed it.

Also, スタバる = to goto starbucks.

Both are pretty common.

Here's another that puts kanji in the mix: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunoichi (with some notes about mixing...)

Jarvik7 Wrote:Also, スタバる = to goto starbucks.

ええぇ！みじで！？

You can also use katakana for the roots of certain verbs to use them for particular meanings, e.g., もうヤッた？ (やる as "get laid").

There are multi-alphabet nouns too. For example, テレビっ子 is a child who spends a lot of time watching TV like a couch potato. As you can see, it has katakana (テレビ), hiragana (っ), and kanji (子).

バグる - game/program glitches
ググる - google
デニる - go to Denny's
ミサドる - go to Mr. Donut
スタンバる - standby