Katakana Analysis Final

katakana is most commonly used to represent loan words, onomatopoeic words, and foreign names. I am going to analyze two examples in particular.

1) Onomatopoeic: expressing natural sound
ピンポン（ding-dong)

I find this is an interesting onomatopoeic word. Not only does this represent door bell sound, it also represents PingPong. There is also a Japanese movie about PingPong (Table Tennis). There are several reason why choose Katakana to repent table tennis. First, I guess playing PingPong makes such sound. Second, table tennis originates in China. In Chinese, table tennis is pronounced as PingPong. Therefore it also falls into "Loan Word" Category. I guess the reason table tennis is represented in katakana, instead of Kanji, is because this movie is not just about table tennis, but the dynamic of the sportsmen's story.      

2)Foreign Loan Word:
コーヒー（coffee）
It is interesting that how japanese use this loan word, as on the same website we can also find 珈琲, which is the Kanji Version of the word "Coffee". I guess katakana represents the coffee in general, while Kanji represents the particular type/brand of the coffee. I think this store uses kanji to represent instead of katakana is because they might want to differentiate their product with others, as theirs coffee bean is from Asian countries, such as China.

3)Species: (animal, plant,etc)
ネコ（cat）
イヌ（dog）
I never see cat and dog written in hiragana anywhere, apart from our text book.

4)Emphasize
イマ(Now)　http://www.ima-gr.co.jp/
ニポン(Japan)　http://dic.nicovideo.jp/a/不思議の国のニポン