Katakana Adventures!

It's really interesting to see what loan words, or がいらいご (words from other language appropriated by Japanese and written in Katakana) exist in Japanese. It's also funny to see how some of the words have lost or changed their meanings. And finally there are some really funny onomatopoeia using Katakana. After a bit of research, here are, in no particular order, my ten favorite loan words and onomatopoeias.

1. サウスポー: Meaning left-handed. This expression come from baseball, and I can't help but wonder if it caught-on in Japan due to the aforementioned sport's popularity there.

2. チーズ: As in say cheese. You have to wonder how this came around and caught on in Japan.

3. アイス: Who doesn't like ice cream? Well, actually me kinda since I'm lactose intolerant :|

4. バイキング: Ok this one confused me at first, but apparently in Japanese "viking" means an all-you-can eat buffet. Viking are cool and all, but actually I kind of like their definition better...

5. ワンワン: This sounds so completely different from how we think dogs sound. Then again, I guess small dogs do kind of sounds like that, and it's the bigger ones that give the "barks" or the "arfs" that we in American think of. Makes me wonder how big the average Japanese dog is.

6. ゲロゲロ: It's weird how different this is from ribbit. Maybe frogs sound different in Japan?

7. ズーズー: Or in English: Slurp. Kind of funny how the difference in utensils makes slurping necessary for eating noodles in the East and it's considered rude in the West.

8. マジマジ: Why there's an onomatopoeia for staring I don't know, but it make me happy that this exists.

9. アメフト: A nice convenient abbreviation for American football. Still sounds kind of weird to say out loud though.

10. フローズンヨーグルト: Okay ice cream is good, but like I said above I'm lactose intolerant so I like frozen yogurt better.

So there we go, my favorite Katakana words. It's actually kind of crazy how many loan words there are in the Japanese language, and for long these loan words have existed. It also makes me wonder just how many loan words we use every day in English without noticing it...