Group Members: Max Aguirre, Ashley Crittenden, “Max”

For this project, we decided to compare two different recipes for omurice from different websites. One website was more casual and geared towards beginners, and the other was more professional and geared towards seasoned cooks. Because the information each website wanted to convey was more or less the same (a recipe for omurice), but the tone and style should be different because of the different audiences, we thought it would be an interesting subtle contrast to investigate.

To further break down the stylistic differences between these websites, we have also taken note of the use of mimetic words and special, non-Japanese characters like ☆.

Website #1: “Yummy Omurice with ☆Chicken Rice☆♪” – Cookpad

URL: https://cookpad.com/recipe/935617

Cookpad is a general-use recipe website geared towards casual users where anyone can submit a recipe. This particular recipe was written very casually. As you can see, there was a high percentage of wago, followed by gairaigo and kango: (The light blue section shows English words.)

Some examples of vocabulary found in this website include:

Wago: ｺﾚ、美味しい、大きさ、切る、作り方、懐かしい、お好み、あんまり、味
Kango: 完成、少々、4個、ｺｼｮｳ、牛乳、話題、2杯
Gairaigo: ﾐｯｸｽﾍﾞｼﾞﾀﾌﾞﾙ、ﾎﾟｲﾝﾄ 、ﾁｷﾝﾗｲｽ、サラダ、ｲﾒｰｼﾞ
Mimetic: ベチャっと、しっかり、ふわふわと、ゆっくり、ぐるぐる
Hybrid: 楽チン、鶏肉、中火
English: 100cc, 50g
Symbols: ☆, ♪ , (^o^) (17 uses of symbols overall)

The high percentage of wago we found in both websites was not surprising, as wago is often used in everyday life, and words related to food and eating are part of that. However, especially compared to Nadia, the Cookpad recipe had a very liberal use of gairaigo and barely any kango at all. The gairaigo used in this recipe was not limited to gairaigo-only food names (such as ｵﾑﾗｲｽ) but included things like ﾐｯｸｽﾍﾞｼﾞﾀﾌﾞﾙ and ﾎﾟｲﾝﾄ which certainly have Japanese alternatives.

Of particular interest was the frequent use of half-width katakana and non-Japanese and non-alphabetic symbols. Why would this recipe use cute symbols like ☆, ♪ , and (^o^)? Well, one instance of these symbols we found to actually be a practical use. In the ingredients list, several ingredients are marked with a ☆, and in the second step of the recipe, you are instructed to “add ☆”. In this way, the ☆ symbol is used once to denote a group of ingredients. Overall, though, we believe this recipe’s use of symbols to be a way of expressing an approachable friendliness. The half-width katakana seems to serve a similar purpose, and also possibly to simply make words take up less space. Especially in the how-to steps section, words are grouped into very short lines, and using half-width words when possible may make the recipe appear shorter and less overwhelming.

Overall, our analysis of this website has led us to draw the conclusion that it was deliberately written to appear friendly and approachable.

Website #2: “Gentle On Your Stomach But Still Delicious♪ Japanese-Style Ankake Omurice” – Nadia

URL: https://oceans-nadia.com/user/111095/recipe/376045

Nadia is a website that collects recipes written by pro chefs. Because of this, the website has an overall tone that seems a lot more structured and professional. This recipe in particular had significantly less text than the one on Cookpad. Our analysis found that this recipe’s text consisted almost entirely of wago and kango, as you can see here:

There was about a third as much gairaigo in this recipe, barely any at all. (The purple and light blue sections show English and mimetic words, respectively. There was only one mimetic word in the entire recipe.)

Some examples of vocabulary found in this website include:

Wago: あんかけ、卵、かつお節、えのき、入れる、切る、馴染んだ、できあがり
Kango: 体調不良、みりん、しょうゆ、大丈夫、重宝する、材料
Gairaigo: オムライス、コメント、フライパン、レシピ
Mimetic: さっと
Hybrid: n/a
English: 100ml, 1cm
Symbols: ♪ (4 uses of symbols overall)

The increase of use in kango and decrease in loanwords on this site geared towards pros seems to show a focus more on technical terminology than style. The users of this website are looking for excellent recipes made by real chefs; it would seem out of place if the recipe was overly friendly and casual. That said, there is still a generally friendly tone in the sections before and after the actual recipe that give the author’s thoughts and recommendations. Some words like しょうゆ are written using hiragana rather than kanji. In addition, the special character ♪ is used four times to denote a cheerful tone.

One point of interest to note is the near-absence of mimetic words in this text. Unlike the Cookpad recipe, which used mimetic words very frequently to describe the textures of food or the way that you should perform steps in the recipe, the only mimetic word the Nadia recipe uses is さっと, and just the one time. This seems to go along with the usage of more kango to focus on technical terms like 半熟になるまで rather than subjective, descriptive ones like ふわふわ. One could infer that Nadia appears to assume that the reader will know what something like 半熟 (half-cooked, soft-boiled) looks like, while the Cookpad recipe takes the effort to describe what various stages in the recipe should look like for its less experienced readers.

Overall, although these two websites had very similar content, the analysis of their word content showed a clear difference in the way language was used to target separate audiences with differing preferences. We found this to be an interesting study of how the use of Japanese vocabulary can be subtly applied to achieve different communication goals.