Our group (group 3), consisting of Donovan Grahame, Maya Lorton and Jia Suwatanapornchai analyzed two different restaurant websites. We analyzed a traditional Japanese sushi restaurant and an authentic Italian pizza restaurant. We believe that the difference in cuisine will provide useful information to see how the different types of words in the Japanese language are used.
Both pages are from the “about section” of the website, but there is a difference in the types of words used on each page. For this project, our group decided to focus on the three types of words in Japanese: NJ-Words, SJ-Words and loan words (Gairaigo). The first page that was analyzed was the “about section” from the Sukiyabashi Jiro website.
Example 1: Sushi restaurant, Sukiyabashi Jiro
NJ (67.1%): 鮨, 握った, 煮切り醤油, 煮詰め, 引いて, 客の前, 置いていました, 手で素早く, 茶を飲み, のれん, 拭いて, 後, おしゃべりしたり, お酒, すきやばし次郎, 江戸前, 守って, 出来たて, にぎり, 美味しく召し上がって, 訪れる, 遅れない, 時間, ご飯, 炊き上げ, 酢めし, 楽しん, お店, 合う, 仕入れて, おつまみ, 食べる, おまかせ, お品書き, 仕入れ, 決められた, 目, なるべく早く, 特別, 設けて, ほとんど, 客様, 来店く, 襟なし, 断りする, 方, 控えめ, 願いし, 預け, 背
SJ (22.7%): 気軽, 発達, 鮨職人, 屋台, 具合, 雰囲気, 用意, 時間, 存分, 築地, 魚介, 当日, 順番, 黒板, 一番, 着用, 入店, 場合, 香水
Gairaigo (8.0%): カウンター, ドレスコード, ジャケット, シャツ, ズボン, サンダル, バッグ
Hybrid (2.3%): は江戸時代, 予約時間
Sukiyabashi Jiro is a sushi restaurant in Tokyo, Japan. The upper class restaurant gives customers an amazing experience with dinners that can cost hundreds of dollars. The website’s text has been color coded to show Native Japanese words in green, Sino Japanese words in blue, loan words in yellow, and the two examples of hybrids in dark pink. Analyzing the Japanese restaurant’s page was interesting, since the majority of the words used were Native Japanese words. Most of the Native Japanese words that were used had 漢字 in it, but there were some cases where they only used ひらがな. For example, in the section 「おまかせ」を食べる, お任せ has 漢字 in it but in the case of this website, it was only written in ひらがな. There are two interesting cases of hybrid words in this text. One example is under the section 店を訪れる, the word for reservation time, 予約時間 is a hybrid word. 予約 is a Native Japanese word but 時間 is a Sino Japanese word.
Another interesting find on this website was the usage of Gairaigo throughout the page. The Gairaigo on this page only made up 8% of the words used and was written in カタカナ. All of the loan words used on this page were for foreign ideas or items. The ドレスコード section contained a lot of Gairaigo like ジャケット,サンダル, and シャツ which are all from western languages. One thing that stood out on this page was the word バッグ to mean somebody’s bag instead of the Japanese word for it, かばん (鞄).
The choice of words and phrases throughout this text represents traditional Japanese. The writing style is very polite. For example, いただいています and しておりません are used in a polite way which represents the restaurant for it being a traditional Japanese restaurant. The usage of hiragana and Native Japanese words fit the style of the restaurant.
Example 2: Il Tamburello Pizzeria
NJ (53%):働きました, 売っていた, 言葉, 自分, 店, 貧しい南, 幸せな, 美味しい, 安くお腹いっぱい, 食べる, 組んだ, 生地, 焼く, 変わらない, 日本, 幸せ, 感じています, 匂い, 笑い声, 揚げ, 屋台, 香り, 朝, 食材, 出来る限り, 物, 使って, 質も良く安い, たくさん手, 入る世, 中, 街, 人
Gairaigo (25%): ミレニアム, イタリア, カンパーニ, ナポリ, ピッツァ, アドルフォ, マルレッタ, ピッツェリア, スパゲッタータ, コンセプト, レンガ, ポンペイ, プリミティブ, グルメ, ガス, ナポレターニ, バジリコ, メルカート, 、コルネット, エスプレッソ, ソウルフード
SJ (22%): 職人, 7歳, 街中, 駅, 師, 薪, 酵母, 長時間発酵, 時代, 行為, 現代, 提供, 為, 窯, 市場, 喧噪, 排気, 怒声, 国産, 道端
Il Tamburello is an Italian pizza restaurant in Tokyo, Japan. This cozy restaurant provides customers with authentic Italian cuisine, while also staying affordable with meals only costing around $10/person. The second page analyzed was also an “about section” from the Italian restaurant, Il Tamburello Pizzeria’s website. The color coding for this section was Native Japanese in blue, Gairaigo in yellow and Sino Japanese words in green. This website had a more even distribution of the three types of words than Sukiyabashi Jiro. Even though the majority of the page used Native Japanese words, there were much more Gairaigo than there was on Sukiyabashi Jiro’s website. Gairaigo was the second most used word type at 25% of the text while Sino Japanese had the least at 22% of the text.
The Gairaigo used in this text are mostly used for foreign locations. カタカナ is used to represent these words as well as the names of people with foreign names. Other appearances of Gairaigo are words that came from other languages. Instead of using the Japanese word for concept（概念）they wrote it as コンセプト. An interesting find in this text was the change in the spelling of the word ピザ. In Japanese, pizza is usually spelled as ピザ but this text changes the spelling of the word to be ピッツァ. When it is spelled like this, the word sounds closer to the Italian pronunciation, rather than the American pronunciation of the word. Most of the words for foods in the text were Gairaigo words and were written in カタカナ. However, there was one instance where the word for yeast was written as 酵母 which is Sino Japanese.
There was an increase in Gairaigo used in this text compared to Sukiyabashi Jiro. The cuisine of this restaurant differed from the other, since it was a foreign cuisine, which led to an increase in the usage of Gairaigo. However, the different uses of text were fairly evenly distributed. The audience of this restaurant are looking for a more authentic Italian cuisine which is why there were usage of Gairaigo, but still kept it good for all audiences since the majority of words were Native Japanese.
Summary
The majority of words from both of these texts are Native Japanese, but they differ in the amount of Sino Japanese and Gairaigo they use. The difference in cuisine from each restaurant shows a difference in word choice, but the main difference was the audience of each restaurant. Il Tamburello Pizzeria has an audience of people who want to enjoy authentic Italian cuisine while Sukiyabashi Jiro is for special occasions and overall an upper class restaurant. One of the most shocking things we found in our analysis was how Native Japanese was used as the majority of the words and how little Sino Japanese was used. In both pieces of text, Native Japanese was over half the words used, and Sino Japanese was under 25%. With their difference in audience, it is understandable to see their reasoning in word choice.