# Japanese Term for Graffiti **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 15, 2010, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-term-for-graffiti/525101 "2010-01-15T18:26:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2010, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-term-for-graffiti/525101/21 "2010-01-18T21:21:24Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > Which is exactly what I did. 屁股 活寶 [Moderator Note] **Koxinga** , it is against the rules to insult other posters in GQ. Since it is a rather mild one, I am making this a note instead of a warning. However, don’t do this again. I also note [this rule](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=7697021#post7697021) from the Board FAQ: > [@](#): > > Must I post in English? > The Straight Dope Message Board is owned by a publication based in the USA. The common language of all the moderators of this message board is English. For that reason we ask that all posts on this message board be made in English. The staff members need to be able to read and understand posts made at the message board. > > Exceptions include requests for help with translation, explanation of foreign language words or expressions, foreign words or phrases that have come into English, etc. Most of the posts in this thread are fine, since they address translation issues. However, don’t start throwing foreign phrases around unless you provide an (accurate) translation. Colibri General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![JpnDude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/838e76/32.png) [@JpnDude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JpnDude)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2010, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-term-for-graffiti/525101/22 "2010-01-18T21:30:55Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Is there, then, a one-to-one correspondence between the katakana and the hiragana? What determines which of the two one would use, if they’re both syllabaries? And how may the writing systems be mixed: Is it permissible to write some words in one system, and some in another? Or even to write a single word with a mixture of the systems? Yes, there is a one-to-one correspondence for the most part. Both styles can be used to transcribe any Japanese word. Very generally speaking, hiragana is used for “native” Japanese words and katakana for loan words. In real world Japan, any word can be written in either style depending on the writer’s context, mood, habit, attitude, etc. ---
**Author:** ![phi2dao](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/6de8d8/32.png) [@phi2dao](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phi2dao)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2010, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-term-for-graffiti/525101/23 "2010-01-18T22:23:11Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > I’ve never seen one word written partly in katakana and partly in hiragana. However, it’s very common for one word to be in kanji and hiragana: 落書き is an example, because 落書 is kanji and き is hiragana. 消しゴム (eraser) is written in kanji, hiragana, and katakana. Isn’t Japanese fun! ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2010, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-term-for-graffiti/525101/24 "2010-01-18T22:25:41Z")
> [@JpnDude](#): > > Yes, there is a one-to-one correspondence for the most part. Both styles can be used to transcribe any Japanese word. Very generally speaking, hiragana is used for “native” Japanese words and katakana for loan words. In real world Japan, any word can be written in either style depending on the writer’s context, mood, habit, attitude, etc. (Expanding on, and agreeing with, JpnDude’s post): Writing a word in katakana can be used to emphasise the word, a bit like writing an English word in italics. Or to convey other nuances like coolness or fakeness, or a foreigner speaking. Also words for animals such as “dog” and “cat” are written in katakana. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2010, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-term-for-graffiti/525101/25 "2010-01-18T23:18:57Z")
It just seems so baffling to me… An analogy, I think, would be if English used two completely different sets of characters for the alphabet, and wrote sometimes in one, sometimes the other. Yes, there are capital and lower-case letters, but most of those at least resemble each other. On a Japanese keyboard, would you use the shift key to switch between hiragana and katakana? ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2010, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-term-for-graffiti/525101/26 "2010-01-18T23:25:34Z")
> [@nikonikosuru](#): > > I give Koxinga credit for making a good attempt, at least he doesn’t come off sounding pompous and condescending. That certainly wasn’t my intention–I was just annoyed to come into the thread and see a post that was clearly wrong, to the extent of including phonemes that Japanese _doesn’t have_. So, as long as I’m pompous and condescending anyway, are we now Making People Feel Snuggly for Helping, Even If They Didn’t Have the Right Answer, Since 1973? > [@Koxinga](#): > > Which is exactly what I did. 屁股 活寶 Then have \*\*her \*\*write it out for you next time, since something was apparently lost in the transition from her mouth to your typing it. I’m going to assume the last part is insulting, since you got warned for it, but unfortunately I don’t recognize it as any Japanese I know and I don’t speak or read Chinese, so if you want me to get the full impact, you’ll have to take it to the Pit or PM it to me. Unless you’d prefer to continue to insult me from behind the screen of a language I don’t know. > [@Chronos](#): > > Is there, then, a one-to-one correspondence between the katakana and the hiragana? Yes. But a number of katakana are seldom used (e.g., the mora written を in hiragana and ヲ in katakana, usually romanized as \*wo \*or _o_, is seen very frequently in hiragana but seldom in katakana). > [@](#): > > What determines which of the two one would use, if they’re both syllabaries? Generally speaking, kanji are used to write nouns, verb stems, and adjective stems; hiragana are used to write adjective endings, verb endings, particles, common adverbs, etc.; and katakana are used to write foreign loan words, foreign names, sound effects, etc. My name is Megan (polite/humble). Watashi wa Megan to moushimasu. 私はメガンと申します。 watashi: kanji wa: hiragana me ga n: katakana to: hiragana mou: kanji shi ma su: hiragana watashi: noun, _I/me/etc._ wa: particle, marks subject of sentence megan: proper noun to: particle, marks indirect quote moushimasu: verb, humble, polite form, _to be called/to say_ > [@Giles](#): > > I’ve never seen one word written partly in katakana and partly in hiragana. Well, it would depend what you consider to be “the word.” Off the top of my head, you could have ゲットする getto suru, which is \*to score (a goal, point, etc.) \*or _to get_. It’s a \*suru \*verb, where you’re combining a noun (_getto_, from the English _get_) with the verb \*suru \*(_to do_). In this example, \*getto \*is katakana and \*suru \*is hiragana. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2010, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-term-for-graffiti/525101/27 "2010-01-18T23:32:17Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Yes, there are capital and lower-case letters, but most of those at least resemble each other. A lot of hiragana and katakana are reasonably similar to each other. It’s kind of comparable to uppercase and lowercase roman letters, actually. (ETA: Entirely in the sense of having two ways of writing each “letter,” and very little in usage, except where katakana might be used for emphasis the same way all-caps might.) A lot of it’s just what you’re used to. (I mean, seriously, how much does \*A \*resemble _a_, or _N n_? \*E \*and _e_?) Some kana pairs: ka: か カ ya: や ヤ ki: き キ ri: り リ You can see a full list of all of them side-by-side [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kana#Hiragana_and_katakana). > [@](#): > > On a Japanese keyboard, would you use the shift key to switch between hiragana and katakana? I can’t speak for a Japanese keyboard, but when I used to type in Japanese, I’d use an IME where I’d type using a normal QWERTY keyboard, it would convert to kana as I’d type, and then when I’d hit enter, it would convert the whole word to its best-guess of what it was supposed to be, with proper kanji etc. If that wasn’t the right one, I could bring up a small menu (IIRC, by hitting enter again) of all potential options. I think there were usage notes, too, for which kanji to use for which word, when they’d be written the same in kana but differently in kanji (the notes were in Japanese). ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2010, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-term-for-graffiti/525101/28 "2010-01-18T23:48:35Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > Generally speaking, kanji are used to write nouns, verb stems, and adjective stems; hiragana are used to write adjective endings, verb endings, particles, common adverbs, etc.; and katakana are used to write foreign loan words, foreign names, sound effects, etc. > > My name is Megan (polite/humble). > Watashi wa Megan to moushimasu. > 私はメガンと申します。 > watashi: kanji > wa: hiragana > me ga n: katakana > to: hiragana > mou: kanji > shi ma su: hiragana > > watashi: noun, _I/me/etc._ > wa: particle, marks subject of sentence > megan: proper noun > to: particle, marks indirect quote > moushimasu: verb, humble, polite form, _to be called/to say_ Of course, this is all the general textbook style, another way to use them is more or less as a font. Katakana, since it looks rigid, can be used to look “formal” (I’ve heard of girls issuing apologies via text message in full katakana) or “robotic” (I believe Robo in Chrono Trigger speaks entirely or mostly in katakana in the Japanese version for instance, though don’t quote me on that). I’ve heard from a (native speaker) teacher it can also be interpreted as the equivilent of YELLING IN ALL CAPS, though I’ve never seen that personally. Likewise, hiragana can be used exclusively to “voice” children (since small children generally don’t know many kanji, I’d assume). I’d hazard a guess that somewhere out there there’s a gaijin character that has his dialogue written entirely in romaji as well, but I’ve never seen that specific one. There are some other nuanced ones I’ve heard of (emphasis on heard of), but probably aren’t nearly as common due to the difficulty (even for a native speaker) of reading it. For instance an older character set called hentaigana may be used to voice, say, a character from the past in a flashback, time travel scenario, whatever. It’s purportedly used in some of the more esoteric genres of historical fiction (Think of writing in Ye Olde Englishe). Alternatively, they could use the old Pre-Langauge-Reform-Kanji-Overload style for characters who are really smart, formal, old, or some combination of those. Though what I just wrote falls more on the “in popular culture” side of the scale, and wouldn’t be correct in most settings. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2010, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-term-for-graffiti/525101/29 "2010-01-19T05:49:25Z")
> [@phi2dao](#): > > 消しゴム (eraser) is written in kanji, hiragana, and katakana. For those playing along at home, the kanji and hiragana part form the word 消し “keshi” which comes from the verb “kesu” (put out, erasu, extinguish, erase). Japanese verbs typically have the kanji part and then the ending of the verb is written in hiragana. The katakana part of the above word is ゴム “gomu” which is Japanese pronunciation of “gum,” for rubber. This is a “loan word” from English and gets katakana. Another example of mixing katakana and hiragana is サボる　“saboru,” a verb which means to slack off, skip work or school, etc. It comes from the English word sabotage. While it’s possible for any word to be written in either katakana and hiragana, you have to remember that writing in the form not normally used adds an emphasis to the word. Hence, words such as びっくり “bikkuri” (to be surprised) and つらい “tsurai” (painful, bitter）are frequently written in katakana ビックリ　and ツライ to emphasis the degree of feeling. Japanese TV and manga will sometimes show subtitles or the script written all in katakana for foreigners speaking Japanese to emphsise they are speaking broken Japanese. However, since Japanese words don’t have spaces between the words, it’s difficult to parse long sentences which are written entirely in kana, so you don’t see that in most situations. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2010, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-term-for-graffiti/525101/30 "2010-01-19T16:26:13Z")
> [@TokyoPlayer](#): > > However, since Japanese words don’t have spaces between the words, it’s difficult to parse long sentences which are written entirely in kana, so you don’t see that in most situations. The fun example I always like to whip out here, which I got from one of my Japanese professors who wanted to illustrate the importance of kanji: ここではきものをぬいでください。 Depending on how you parse it, it’s either: _Koko de hakimono o nuide kudasai._ Please remove your shoes here. or _Koko de wa kimono o nuide kudasai._ Please remove your clothes **here**. If the sentence weren’t written all in kana, there would be no ambiguity. The problem is that は is pronounced as \*wa \*when it’s used as a topic-marker particle (it’s the \*wa \*in _konnichi wa_, by the by), but \*ha \*when it’s part of a word. ---
**Author:** ![Sleel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/73ab20/32.png) [@Sleel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sleel)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2010, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-term-for-graffiti/525101/31 "2010-01-20T00:56:10Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > There are some other nuanced ones I’ve heard of (emphasis on heard of), but probably aren’t nearly as common due to the difficulty (even for a native speaker) of reading it. For instance an older character set called hentaigana may be used to voice, say, a character from the past in a flashback, time travel scenario, whatever. It’s purportedly used in some of the more esoteric genres of historical fiction (Think of writing in Ye Olde Englishe). Alternatively, they could use the old Pre-Langauge-Reform-Kanji-Overload style for characters who are really smart, formal, old, or some combination of those. Tanizaki used _katakana_ for the husband’s diary in The Key, while rendering the wife’s entries in _hiragana_. _Hiragana_ was called “women’s writing” when first developed, since it derived from the “softer” 草書 (_sôsho_) cursive calligraphic style. Pre-WWII, _katakana_ was used more, especially for official documents, and it did have more of a formal, male connotation. This is yet another example of leveraging the writing system as a literary conceit. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2010, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-term-for-graffiti/525101/32 "2010-01-20T03:17:36Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > I can’t speak for a Japanese keyboard, but when I used to type in Japanese, I’d use an IME where I’d type using a normal QWERTY keyboard, it would convert to kana as I’d type, and then when I’d hit enter, it would convert the whole word to its best-guess of what it was supposed to be, with proper kanji etc. If that wasn’t the right one, I could bring up a small menu (IIRC, by hitting enter again) of all potential options. I think there were usage notes, too, for which kanji to use for which word, when they’d be written the same in kana but differently in kanji (the notes were in Japanese). I’m writing this on a Pananosic “Let’s Note” Japanese laptop. (Love that name, laptops are called “Note PC” here.) The keyboard is QWERTY, but there keys are also labled in hiragana as well. You can switch and type directly in hiragana, but learning another system would take longer for most people than just typing in romaji and having it convert to hiragana automatically. The layout doesn’t seem to make any more sense than QWERTY. Those same keys are た　て　い　す　か　ん　ta, te, su, ka, n. When I was first over in Japan in 1981 I saw a Japanese typewriter. It had several hundred keys, and that over covered a small number of the kanji, of course. You would put additional kanji in as needed. Word processing made a huge contribution to allowing people to be able to become more automated. The ability of the computer to convert kanji relatively intellegently has tremendiously speeded up typing, and predictive suggestions, such as for texting often makes it faster to type Japanese on cell phones than English. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2010, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-term-for-graffiti/525101/33 "2010-01-20T17:33:37Z")
> [@TokyoPlayer](#): > > Those same keys are た　て　い　す　か　ん　ta, te, su, ka, n. For anybody who doesn’t read Japanese and is confused: he accidentally dropped one. It’s ta, te, **i** , su, ka, n. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-term-for-graffiti/525101.md?page=1)