Our team for this project included: David, Minjing, Rongjin, Shohei, Andie
Our group project consisted of analyzing two websites that used different variations of Japanese words. We as a group wanted to see which website focused more on Sino-Japanese, Native-Japanese, and Foreign Loanwords. With this information we want to explain why these variations were used. The first website is Asahi Shimbun, which is a national newspaper in Japan. The second website we used was TokyoBanana and they sell cakes with cartoonish images on them.
Links:
Asahi Shimbun: https://asahi.com
TokyoBanana: https://tokyobanana.jp
www.asahi.com
The www.asahi.com is the website of the Asahi Shimbun, one of the national newspapers in Japan. The kanji of Asahi Shimbun is written as 朝日新聞（あさひしんぶん）which means morning sun newspaper. We found kinds of vocabulary from different fields since Asahi Shimbun is a news website visited by people of all ages. Most news classifications are written with Sino Japanese and loan Japanese. Some news classifications have a topic about the international relationship, politics, society, and economy are always written Sino Japanese which can show a formal tone. Other news classifications like sports, science, culture, fashion, and life are written with loan words and one of the reasons why these news classifications use loan words is these fields is relatively relaxed. Another reason is that some words, like ファッション, originate from western language words so they should be written with loan words which Japanese learn from childhood.
Firstly, the Sino-Japanese words with on reading are lots of contents words in the webpage. And there are some distinguish between them. As the list shows above, the Sino-Japanese words such as人権 and地震 both exist in Japanese and Chinese and express same meaning. The word 強気 that appears in both Chinese and Japanese, but different in meaning. The word不仲 only exist in Japanese which means bad relationship. And the word社会 is a Japan-made word which be adopted by Chinese. Secondly, the Native-Japanese words such asする and申し込み are used for expressing basic meanings in generally. And the examples such as去る and握る represent actions making by body parts. Finally, the examples of Foreign loanwords that list above are direct transfer such asリスク(risk), ニュース一(news) andホテル(hotel). The foreign names for exampleワコール(Wacoal) andトランプ(Trump) also translated directly.
www.tokyobanana.jp
As a website sells cakes with flavors such as coffee milk, Tokyo banana has many cartoon images and these colorful cartoon images become the mainstream creative element in its website page which close to the taste of young people. Compared with Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo banana has less Sino Japanese and more native Japanese, loan words in the website. In addition, some Sino Japanese are written with native Japanese and some loan words are written with native Japanese and Sino Japanese. For example, 秘密(ひみつ)is a Sino Japanese words that mean ‘secret’. However, it is written with native Japanese ひみつ. We think that Tokyo banana uses native Japanese since their product-coffee milk sells mainly to children and the young girl. It seems easier for kids to read the website and looks so cute with native Japanese. And the seller wants to attract potential purchasers as many as possible so that the seller changes correct writing forms like 東京ばな奈ラッコ( it should be 東京バナナラッコ). It supposed to be thought as a sales promotion. This circumstance mostly happens on a website which sells the product.
This website uses mostly hiragana and katakana to to describe the product which is coffee creamer. As well as there are a lot of words in English that are placed around the website. Especially the links to learn more about the company are all in English. The name being the most prominent part is ‘Tokyo Banana Racco’ is written in English. There are a mix of Sino-Japanese and Native-Japanese. I think that they use more Katakana, hiragana and English because the ad is targeted toward young women. Young people in Japan find the use of foreign loan words and English to be cool and trendy so using them in their ad would attract more young people to their product, coffee flavored cake. They also use brighter colors and they have less words in the ad than it would if it was a news article or a scholarly article which would use more sino-Japanese.
The percentage of hiragana, katakana, kanji, and english characters on each website. It is clear that the Asahi Shimbun page has less hiragana and katakana characters while having significantly more kanji characters. The amount of english characters on each page were similar. (It is also important to note that the overall number of characters is much more on the Asahi Shimbun website.)