Katakana is used in Japanese to express words they do not have originally. Katakana is not used only for foreign and borrowed words, it can also be used to emphasis something in Japanese. That is why one is able to see カワイイwritten across a lot of the Japanese women magazines, when kawaii is a japanese word. Before doing this project, I thought that most, if not all the katakana is borrowed from English, such as チョコレート、コカ コーラ ゼロ、ニュース。 This is not true. Only about maybe 60% of the words are borrowed from English. Words like アルバイト comes from Germany and パン is from Portugal or France. Today katakana is also used for the younger generation to express other saying such as ナイスミドル、アラフォ. My favorite katakana is are onomonopia words such as ピカピカ、フワフワ、ピンポン
ピカピカ really sounds bright. this is probably why pikachu is makes pikapika noises an shoots out lighting.
フワフワ means fluffy in japanese and it really does sound light and fluffy.
It is also interesting that animals make different noises around the world. In America dogs go bow wow and in Japanese dogs go ワンワン。Cats go meow in America and in Japan they go ニーヤニーヤ
おもしろいですね！
