mezbup
Member
From: sausage lip
Registered: 2008-09-18
Posts: 1681
Website
I'm starting this thread for anyone to post katakana fails. There sure as shit is a lot of them out there.
I'll start it off.
セクハラ = sexual harassment.
FAIL.
mezbup
Member
From: sausage lip
Registered: 2008-09-18
Posts: 1681
Website
liosama wrote:
I don't get what you mean? :S
Well some katakana words can be read right off the bat, easy to make out what they mean. Others just fail terribly, either they sound completely stupid, have been ridiculously butchered to sound Japanese or don't even come close.
In the case of セクハラ what they've done is in the typical Japanese fashion taken a compound word and abbreviated the shit out of it. Now this works for kanji for example 入学試験 > 入試
but what they've done here is abbreviated sexual to セク and harassment to ハラ to make セクハラ which is just a total fail IMO.
Katakana is one of my pet peeves with Japanese but it makes me laugh sometimes. So please, post Katakana words that make you laugh, cry, get angry, wanna break things, or tell all your friends.
Ben_Nielson
Member
From: Japan
Registered: 2008-12-19
Posts: 164
プリクラ
And yeah, the unnecessary usage of these loanwords wears on me. I'm sick of learning Japanese words only to later find out that more often a katakanized version of an English word is used in its place most of the time. 
Also, Japanese people tend to be really smooth at blending Japanese and English. If they want to talk about something above your level, they'll just mix together a bunch of katakanized English words in Japanese basic vocabulary and grammar. Which is really awfully annoying when you're trying to learn Japanese. heh... and by "smooth" above, I mean I can barely even contemplate doing that by mixing in Japanese words with English. But they do it fast, naturally, in the flow of conversation.
In general, I've found these words more of a hurdle than a help in learning Japanese. It's hard to distinguish which words are common use katakana words and which ones are just English words they're katakanizing to make it easier for me to understand them (which is a good reason to avoid English speaking Japanese people if you're wanting to practice your Japanese).
liosama
Member
From: sydney
Registered: 2008-03-02
Posts: 896
I find that only natural though.
Humans like to do things which involve the least energy, pronouncing long words involves energy, shortening words, compression etc thus are only natural consequences of being human.
I find セクハラ, アルパー (Aluminum Paper) and whatever the hell else exists out there all ingenious. Though it took the Japanese guy a while to tell me what アルパー was without me having heard of it before. Also, I knew セクハラ first, before I learnt what パワ・ハラ was. When I heard it I knew it was "power harassment". There is a systemization to it all I believe.
and Capital, yeah
there are a few studies that show Japanese English learners who have an extensive knowledge of gairaigo are far more advantageous than ones who don't have so much. But you are right there is a huge lacking on the teaching side as they don't exploit this massive (english) lexicon in Japanese.
mezbup
Member
From: sausage lip
Registered: 2008-09-18
Posts: 1681
Website
グランプリ = grand prize. Sounds so much more like gran prix.
Interestingly enough, I looked at the word frequency lists on the Jxtended 1.15 plugin and there was something like high, good, fair, low, lowest. High and good had pretty much no katakana, fair was nearly FILLED with it.
