The Failing Literacy of a New Japanese Generation
Like always, I’m into something. Generally I surf the web picking up bits of useless information and occasionally come across patterns. For those of you out there, I’m a bit of language person myself. In fact, I plan on majouring in Japanese. So, when I scrolling through a friends social networking page I came across something odd, a word in katakana rather than what I deemed should be in kanji or even hiragana. Oddly enough, I never found any specific as to why this is.
For example, let’s take the word for chicken, niwatori. In hiragana it’s にわとり. Katakana: ニワトリ. And finally the kanji: 鶏. While it’s often found in it’s kanji form it’s no uncommon to see it in his katakana form, e.g. “ニ鶏が今朝卵を生んだ。” versus “ニワトリが今朝卵を生んだ。” Both mean “This morning the chicken laid an egg.” But, as you’ll see, the sentence differ by the way “niwatori” is written. Similarly, yagi (goat) is another example.
So, me, being me, went to my former Japanese teacher and asked for help. And here’s what she had to say:
” …ヤギ is a scientific name of 山羊…There is a growing number of Japanese youth who [are] not proficient enough to correctly read/write not-so-frequently-used kanji such as 山羊. As a result, many Japanese people now opt for Katakana ヤギ even when they are not using the term as a scientific name. Other examples include ニワトリ. “
But what does this mean in English exactly?
Essentially, the newer Japanese generation are calling chickens Gallus gallus domesticus.
While, it’s different in Japanese, one can essentially understand what’s going. And, what’s even more ironic is that you think the scientific name would be more difficult, guess not.
So, please, if you’re studying Japanese, remember, use the Kanji if it has one. You’ll look smart.
