Welcome to the room of interesting trivia! vol.7

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Welcome to the room of interesting trivia!

Today’s theme is ギザギザ[giza giza](in Katakana, ぎざぎざ in Hiragana).

It is classified as Gitaigo (mimetic word) and it means jagged.

What do you think the origin of the Gitaigo is historically?

The answer is “gather[ギャザー]” in English.
For example “gathered” skirt is made by cloth folded.

One day when Japanese coins came to be made, there was a desire to put groove edge on the coins. But it was hard to explain it because there was no word for it. So, it is said that using the word, ギャザー, people gradually said the condition which is jagged as “ギャザ” then it transformed to “ギザギザ[giza giza]”

Welcome to the room of interesting trivia! vol.5

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Welcome to the room of interesting trivia!

Today’s theme is Katakana from loan words.

Katakana is useful for loan words we adopted from various languages.
Katakana is a Japanese character expression mainly for sound expressions and the pronunciations of loan words.

Old Japanese people have adopted various kinds of words and phrases from many languages.
They have learned them and hoped to use them as loan words from other people across the world. They were eager to learn and study various new words and phrases from diverse group of people and diverse culture.
It’s a Japanese history.

So, mostly those people who felt the need to study new things which they didn’t know were very hard workers, discovering their future. They dedicated themselves to develop Japanese people, society, nation and culture, although some people felt some threats from the unknown world.

For instance, medical terms;
various kinds of medical terms were imported by Dutch in Edo period.
Philipp Franz von Siebold came in Japan for a doctor of Dutch Mercantile establishment(オランダ商館) located at Nagasaki(長崎), Hirado(平戸) in 1823. He taught and conveyed many medical terms and skills to Japanese people. He was originally German.

Therefore, those people who studied them listened to each pronunciation of the medical terms and tried to adopt them into their Katakana.

However, it was often too hard to listen to and express them in their language.
It is still common for most people who have grown up in a different environment to have their own ears for the sounds; which means a different group of people tend to hear or listen to the same words or phrases in a different way.

So, there are many loan words which were adopted as a different sound or pronunciation in Katakana, still left and used.

ex.)
karte [in German] — カルテ [karute] ; medical record [in English]
morphine [mrfin:in Dutch] — モルヒネ [moruhine] ; morphine [mɔːrfiːn :in English]
allergie [in German] — アレルギー [arerugi:] ; allergy [in English]

Not only medical world,
old Japanese people adopted and studied various kinds of words and phrases from the world.