~katakana analysis draft~

1.Choose at least 2 katakana words/expressions that you found and think about what kinds of effects / purposes there may be in these words/expressions writing in katakana instead of hiragana or kanji.
A: The frist word I found is インターネット, which is the loanword for internet in Japanese. Unlike some other technical or scientific terms which can be written in Kanji in Japanese,  インターネット only has the katakana form. I think the reason for that is to clarify the foreign origin of this term and to formalize its reading in Japanese.
    The next word I found is ピンポン, which is the onomatopoeia for the sound of doorbell in Japanese. I think the reason for writing it in Katakana is to differentiate it from hiragana and thus avoiding confusion when they are used together in the same sentence. 
    And the reason for both of the words not applying Kanji form I think is because the Kanji form of those words doesn't convey meanings as conspicuous or understandable as other terms may do when be transcribed, so adding those void kanji for those terms would be of no difference with setting hindrance for communication.


2. Also, think why there are such effects/purposes.
A: First, As we all know that lots of kanji in Japanese have different readings, therefore if kanji is used instead of katakana in those cases, people should know their readings first; otherwise, if people are not sure about their readings or misrepresent them with other readings, confusion will be created and limitation of using those terms can be caused. Also, the kanji for those two words in Chinese are meaningless, or in other words they are merely onomatopoeia; hence, introducing those additional kanji to Japanese people is equivalent to set unnecessary burden on communication and study to them. 
    Second, as we know hiragana alone is usually used as parts of speech that other than nouns or adjectives. That is because putting together clusters of hiragana can be so confusing and so hard to read. So people used katakana or kanji to distinguish some words from hiragana. And when, by using kanji, the meanings of some words are not easy to grasp, or their readings are not obvious to tell to people, katakana will be used instead of kanji to ease communication and understanding and avoid redundancy of applying meaningless kanji.
    Third, as a tool to express loanword, katakana can appear exotic when they are used especially instead of kanji; that's why lots of Japanese company write their names in katakana.  Moreover, if you go to Japan, you may find lots of food names and product names are written in katakana instead of kanji or hiragana, that's because katakana can make them appear more exotic and attractive to customers and  thus stimulating their consumption on these food or products.
     Forth, also as a tool to express loanword particularly foreign concepts, katakana has more academic impression on people. Hence, using katakana sometimes can make a person appear more knowledgeable and educated, and make a term appear more academic. And that's another reason for katakana's popularity and wide using in modern Japan.


3. Think about why each textbook is different in explaining katakana, and why the textbooks explained katakana in the manners that they did.
A: I think the using of katakana has been quite diverse and complicated. It seems to follow certain rules, however in many cases it also can be an individual thing. Therefore on text books, we can see though the general directions of explaining the usage of katakana are universal, there are always variations among them. Because the using of katakana is really flexible and it is getting more and more popular in modern Japan. As a result, the enhancement of variations of using katakana is inevitable and its application will be far less possible to be enclosed within certain rules.