Historical use of katakana for foreign words

Azomyr · 23 Mar 2013

Hello. Considering my limited knowledge, in pre-Modern Japan was used kanji several times to write down imported words and concepts in a semantical or in a phonetical way like "centrifugal force" (遠心力 enshinryoku, imported through the Dutch), "arquebus" (火縄銃 hinawajū, imported through the Portuguese) or "naraka" -Buddhist hell- (奈落 naraku, possibly imported through Japanese Buddhist monks who learned Sanskrit in China to Southern or Central Asian Buddhist monks [just as Prajna (般若三藏)]). I have rarely found Japanese words introduced several centuries ago that are only written in katakana; if I'm not wrong one example could be Kushinagar, the place where Gautama Buddha died, which in Japanese is written クシナガラ; although maybe the Chinese form 拘屍那揭羅 was formerly more commonly used.

Could anyone be so kind to tell me when katakana became to be extensively used in Japanese language for nonnative words?
Thanks

Toritoribe · 23 Mar 2013

The first intentional use of katakana for foreign words was seen in the early 18 century, but it was commonly used in Meiji period, and was more widely used after WWⅡ.

Your examples 遠心力, 火縄銃 and 奈落 are not considered 外来語. The first two words are (foreign origin) Japanese word, and the last one is 漢語.

Azomyr · 23 Mar 2013

Toritoribe said:
The first intentional use of katakana for foreign words was seen in the early 18 century, but it was commonly used in Meiji period, and was more widely used after WWⅡ.
Your examples 遠心力, 火縄銃 and 奈落 are not considered 外来語. The first two words are (foreign origin) Japanese word, and the last one is 漢語.

Thank you for the comments.

Related to the reply of Toritoribe, could someone tell me if know whether the Japanese who learned the word 奈落, deliberately made more close its reading to the actual Sanskrit pronounciation than to the Sinicized one? And also, could someone tell me what type of on'yomi reading is the one used for 奈落?

Angel Valis · 24 Mar 2013

This may help:

http://conf.ling.cornell.edu/japanese_historical_linguistics/3.2 Loanwords.pdf

On the topic of 奈落 and words like it, it says:

"...are some common EMJ words, originating as straightforward character readings, which have remained in the language and are still in use. Any word written in Chinese in this way would have been available in Sino-Japanese character readings in EMJ and onwards."

EMJ = Early Middle Japanese (I think).

Toritoribe · 24 Mar 2013

Azomyr said:
Related to the reply of Toritoribe, could someone tell me if know whether the Japanese who learned the word 奈落, deliberately made more close its reading to the actual Sanskrit pronounciation than to the Sinicized one? And also, could someone tell me what type of on'yomi reading is the one used for 奈落?

A dictinary says that 奈落 originated from 奈落迦 which is the transcription of "naraka", so it can't say that 奈落 is more close to the original Sanskrit pronunciation.

What do you mean by "type of on'yomi reading"? 呉音, 漢音, 唐音 or like that?

Azomyr · 26 Mar 2013

Thank you all for the replies

Toritoribe said:
What do you mean by "type of on'yomi reading"? 呉音, 漢音, 唐音 or like that?

Yes, this is what I meant. I have not been able to find to which on'yomi class belongs and I would be very grateful if someone could tell me that, or tell me a specialized website to found that information -even it was totally in Japanese- .

Mike Cash · 26 Mar 2013

I'm curious why you're interested in such arcane aspects of the language as that and even open to being referred to a site totally in Japanese when in another thread you required me to translate some rather simple Japanese sentences for you.

Toritoribe · 27 Mar 2013

Azomyr said:
I have not been able to find to which on'yomi class belongs and I would be very grateful if someone could tell me that, or tell me a specialized website to found that information -even it was totally in Japanese- .

Wiktionary has the data.

奈 - ウィクショナリー日本語版
落 - ウィクショナリー日本語版

Azomyr · 28 Mar 2013

Mike Cash said:
I'm curious why you're interested in such arcane aspects of the language as that and even open to being referred to a site totally in Japanese when in another thread you required me to translate some rather simple Japanese sentences for you.

It's just about interest in etymology. Furthermore, since my less-than-a-year Japanese-language education I find less complicated to translate individual words rather than a text.

Toritoribe said:
Wiktionary has the data.

奈 - ウィクショナリー日本語版
 落 - ウィクショナリー日本語版

Thank you very much

Historical use of katakana for foreign words

Azomyr

先輩

Toritoribe

松葉解禁

Azomyr

先輩

Angel Valis

黒川

Toritoribe

松葉解禁

Azomyr

先輩

Mike Cash

骨も命も皆此の土地に埋めよう

Toritoribe

松葉解禁

Azomyr

先輩

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