The words I chose were onomatopoeia words used to describe the actions happening in the panels.

In order of appearance:

panel 1: トト-strumming　ルンタタ-sound of music

panel 2:　ヨーギュ- fish swimming

panel 3:　アカア- blushing　ドキドキ- heart beat　ピタ- stop

panel 4:　ジイイイ-stare　アイ-love

I chose to write "ai" the word for love in katakana even though it is a word of Japanese origin because I wanted to convey across the action of her falling in love with him.

Composition 2

やまださんへ、

初めまして。わたしはレチフリーニーです。にじゅういっさいです。アメリカからきました。わたしはよねんせいです。コロンビアだいはくのビジュアルアーツのがくせいです。コロンビアだいはちいさいですが、きれいです。たきさのもしろいひとがあります。まいあさにほんごとイタリアごをべんきょうします。わたしのがくせいせいかつはとてもいぞがしいですがたのしいです。しちがつにじゅうよっかににほんへいきます。

よろしくおねがいします。

While I was reading some Manga...

I came across something interesting I wanted to share.

It was clear to me that they were using that kanji as a tally marker because it had five strokes but I ended up looking it up online anyway because I was curious. The kanji he is using is the kanji 正 which means correct, proper or honest. It takes 5 strokes to complete it making it a useful tally mark. 

The tally mark we are most familiar with in the US is the five bar gate:

Which is also used in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, other North American countries and Zimbabwe.

Not only Japan but also Korea, Taiwan and China use the kanji tally mark.

The tally marks used in spanish speaking countries such as Spain and in South American us a box like tally:

Just one of those things you never really think about much but I thought it would be interesting to share what I learned! Hope this was interesting to some other people as well!

Katakana Analysis Draft

オシャレ

"Oshare" is a word of Japanese origin used to describe someone who is stylish. I found this word in a Japanese fashion magazine called Jelly. It was used in a sentence before the word "people"- "オシャレpeople.." to further emphasize the point of fashionable people. It was found on a page with pictures of people from all over the world and was talking about their clothes.
This word caught my attention because the word "oshare" is a word of Japanese origin not a loan word. So it would be expected to be written in hiragana おしゃれ, not katakana オシャレ. The choice here to write the word in katakana instead of hiragana could be out of the need to make the word cooler. Especially because it is used next to an english word. The page also has pictures of foreign people and fashion companies on it so it's possible the wanted to emphasize that idea and write "oshare" as if it was a foreign word in katakana.

キレイ
In a beauty companies ad in the same magazine I found the word "kirei" written in katakana. Which is a similar situation to above in that "kirei" is a word of Japanese origin meaning beautiful or pretty. Also interesting was right after it they used the word kawaii (meaning cute) but chose to wrote that in hiragana. In this case though it appears to me that they wrote the word in katakana as an attention getter. I say this for two reasons. One is that the magazine reads right to left from the front but each page itself actually reads left to right. Therefore キレイis actually the first word you see on the page. Which brings me to my second reason is that this page is an ad. Success of an ad depends on people reading it and being interested in there product. They don't have a chance unless they find some way to catch your attention. Leading to a possible explanation for why they chose to write "kirei" in katakana and not in hiragana like they did with "kawaii".


I think each textbook is different in explaining katakana because of their audience. A elementary school or highschool textbook would have more information about why katakana words are used and when versus a textbook that seems to have an older target audience, such as college aged or business people learning japanese, which could explain why some of the books go into a more historical explanation than a modern usage explanation.