カタカナ！

I know katakana!  Which seems very useful, because a lot of things seem to be written in katakana versus hiragana.  For example, noises.  Remember when I has happy at learning how to write にゃ?  Well, it turns out that that would really be written in katakana, ニャ, which is pretty fair, I guess. I can also write my name in katakana, ロルダン, although I'm not entirely sure how I would write Miles... マイルス？マユルス？マエルス？マエユルシ？？？I don't know... :/

But, as it turns out, a lot of anime titles are written in katakana, which is maybe a little odd?  For example, フリクリ。そしてサムライチャンプルー。FLCL is in katakana I guess for obvious reasons, but the reason Samurai Champloo is also in katakana is perhaps a little more subtle.

For one thing, the word "samurai" is apparently more prevalent only in the west, or just outside of Japan.  They prefer ぶし.  Apparently, when the word "samurai" is used, it tends to be used as a foreign word, like ザサムライ, or "the samurai" which seems to be the Japanese approximation of the English phrase.  So what about Champloo?  It turns out that this is an Okinawan (from the Ryukyu's, remember?) word.  Since it comes from a non-Yamato (imperial Japanese) dialect, it makes sense that it would be considered a foreign word, and written in katakana.  ね、してるか。チャンプルーはえいごで "to mix" or "to hash"です。 And that makes sense, right? Because the show is mix of different styles of storytelling, art, and music.  すごいですね？Whoops, did I turn this into a Samurai Champloo post...?

Okayokay, this was my last post about Samurai Champloo, I swear.

じゃあ、ね