Thursday, December 1, 2011

Revised Katakana Analysis

For this advertisement, the name of the drink is オロナミンC (Oronamin C) and the slogan is 元気ハツラツ (Genki Hatsuratsu = Healthy Cheerful/Full of Life). The name of the drink is understandably in Katakana to give it emphasis and make it look cooler and the name sounds like a combination of loan words. The "min C" at the end might have come from vitamin C. After looking into the history of this product, I saw that I was correct in my assumption about vitamin C and found out that the "Oro" comes from an earlier product, Oronine H Ointment, made by the same company, the Otsuka Pharmaceutical Company. They hoped this new product would generate a familiarity with it's audience. It is slightly similar to the way apple places a lower case "i" before each product.

The slogan is more interesting because it is slightly redundant and grammatically incorrect and hatsuratsu is a Japanese word that has been written in katakana. Both genki and hatsuratsu are adjectives meaning healthy and lively but hatsuratsu has more emphasis on cheerfulness. When written in katakana, it has even more emphasis. Another reason for using katakana is onomatopoeia. Hatsuratsu even sounds like other  Japanese onomatopoeia like "gaku gaku" (tremble tremble), "pata pata" (pitter patter), or "kachi kochi" (body tensing up). You can't really hear a body tensing up, but there is a sound associated with the action. Likewise, it is possible that "hatsu ratsu" is the sound one thinks of when they think of a healthy person. 

Textbooks are different in explaining katakana because there are so many different ways to  explain them and there is no official explanation of usage. It also seems like the usage of katakana is always changing, therefore textbooks written at different times will explain katakana in the context of the time it was written.

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