Code-Mixing with Japanese Kanji
Motivation
Japanese Kanji is mixed into advertisement mainly for selling Japanese food, cosmetics or any trandy products in order to achieve positive country-of-origin effects.
Features
Japanese is agglutinative like Chinese. Words are formed by combining morphemes - the basic linguistic elements together. In the joining process, their meanings and forms with minimum alternation can be retained. For example, two Japanese morphemes 水(mizi; meaning water) and 著(gi; meaning wear) are combined and forming another word 水著(mizigi; meaning swimsuit).
It is common that many Hong Kong audience are unaware and unable to distinguish Kanji from Chinese in local ads. Local residents may not have any knowledge in another culture and language so it is hard for them to understand words of that language. Accordingly, communication is being lost as there is no translation. For example, a private property estate is named 城中駅, a mixing of Chinese 城中 and a Japanese character 駅. Yet, many Hong Kong people may not know the obsolete Chinese word 驛 ([jik6]); meaning station) is a domestic quivalent to 駅.
It is also common to see new Sino-Japanese words formed in Hong Kong these days. For example, the Kanji 激 (geki, meaning very) cannot exist alone, but needs other Kanji to be complements to form words like 激安 (gekiyasu, meaning extremely cheap). Hong Kong youths then borrow the character 激 to be a prefix of another Chinese character like 激新(pgik1][san1], meaning extremely new).
There is a unique and interesting example of code-mixing with Japanese--the word 卡拉OK ([kaa1] [laa1] [ou1] [kei1]) , which contains mixing languages within the word itself. This word is the transliteration of karaoke with localized Cantonese Phonology. The Japanese word "karaoke" itself is a back-borrowing, as the "oke" is an abbreviation of "okesutora". So "karaoke" is a loanword from the English "orchestra" into Japanese. It is a partial mixing of Chinese and English which is imported from Japan while itself is a loan of England.
It is common that many Hong Kong audience are unaware and unable to distinguish Kanji from Chinese in local ads. Local residents may not have any knowledge in another culture and language so it is hard for them to understand words of that language. Accordingly, communication is being lost as there is no translation. For example, a private property estate is named 城中駅, a mixing of Chinese 城中 and a Japanese character 駅. Yet, many Hong Kong people may not know the obsolete Chinese word 驛 ([jik6]); meaning station) is a domestic quivalent to 駅.
It is also common to see new Sino-Japanese words formed in Hong Kong these days. For example, the Kanji 激 (geki, meaning very) cannot exist alone, but needs other Kanji to be complements to form words like 激安 (gekiyasu, meaning extremely cheap). Hong Kong youths then borrow the character 激 to be a prefix of another Chinese character like 激新(pgik1][san1], meaning extremely new).
There is a unique and interesting example of code-mixing with Japanese--the word 卡拉OK ([kaa1] [laa1] [ou1] [kei1]) , which contains mixing languages within the word itself. This word is the transliteration of karaoke with localized Cantonese Phonology. The Japanese word "karaoke" itself is a back-borrowing, as the "oke" is an abbreviation of "okesutora". So "karaoke" is a loanword from the English "orchestra" into Japanese. It is a partial mixing of Chinese and English which is imported from Japan while itself is a loan of England.
Implications
Hong Kong people accept Japanese words and absorb them in their lives for the following reason. Various foreign cultures can easily gain their foothold in a cosmopolitan and hybrid city like Hong Kong. Japanese culture is one of the major flows. The big hit of Japanese drama series, animations, J-pop, Japanese fashion, Japanese youth magazines, J-pop idols, and manga (comics) etc. mark the dynamic and powerful forces of the Japanese transnational cultural flows. This has promoted an unexpected and unprecedented cultural convergence between Chinese and Japanese.
Under this trend, advertisers have to devise new terms to cope with the endless flood of new concepts, new commodities, new information, new technology, and new food from Japan into Hong Kong.
(Leung, 2010)
Under this trend, advertisers have to devise new terms to cope with the endless flood of new concepts, new commodities, new information, new technology, and new food from Japan into Hong Kong.
(Leung, 2010)