Question
Updated on
26 Jan 2020
- Spanish (Spain)
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English (US)
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Japanese
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French (France)
Question about Japanese
I understand that nowadays Katakana is used to write foreign words. Nevertheless, what happened in the past? Was Kanji used to fulfill this function? Or was it Hiragana? My question arises due to the fact that there are words that can be written using the 3 Japanese writing systems, for example:
かるた
カルタ
骨牌
たばこ
タバコ
煙草
I understand that nowadays Katakana is used to write foreign words. Nevertheless, what happened in the past? Was Kanji used to fulfill this function? Or was it Hiragana? My question arises due to the fact that there are words that can be written using the 3 Japanese writing systems, for example:
かるた
カルタ
骨牌
たばこ
タバコ
煙草
かるた
カルタ
骨牌
たばこ
タバコ
煙草
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- Japanese
@Mariel25
you know かるたwas introduced more than 500 years ago in Japan.
at that time, probably it was written something like 歌留多…thus it was read as かるた。
as you know , かるたis originally portuguese or spanish carta*.
in old times most of loan words were written in kanji.
for example
アメリカ…america was originally written 亜米*利加。（幕末〜明治period), so even now we write sometimes 米*国as United States. (Estados unidense)
actually our writing system itself have changed a lot historically.
so as for each loan word, ther is long history.(the way it is written changed a lot.)
たばこ…this word was used in 江戸時代（when samurai was alive)already, so for us , it is almost japanese word.
so we can write 煙草、たばこ、タバコ…as we like freely. that is no problem.
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- Traditional Chinese (Taiwan)
https://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/questi...
According to the web-page linked above, that custom to write loanwords in katakana became common in the Showa era.
Until then, they were written also in hiragana and kanji, too.
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- Spanish (Spain)
@tsuyuharai 詳しく説明いただいてありがとうございました！これについて読むことができるいいサイトはありますか？
- Spanish (Spain)
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