I’m kind of new to learning japanese so tell me if I’m wrong, but katakana is usually used for loanwords, right? Words borrowed from other languages to name things in japan?
I know that トイレ means bathroom, and ペット means pet. Does this mean that they just didn’t have bathrooms or pets in Japan when the language came about? Or did it just go by a different name? I’m mostly curious about the bathroom one tbh
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yeah loanwords, foreign or exotic sounding names or words, sound effects, emphasis (LIKE TYPING IN CAPS) and stuff like that
> didn’t have bathrooms
Nope, they held it in. They were SO RELIEVED when Admiral Perry “Opened Up” Japan so to speak.
Oh there are native words for toilets and bathrooms (手洗い immediately comes to mind). English words just enter the language over time and get used alongside those native words. Lots of other examples of this too.
>Does this mean that they just didn’t have bathrooms or pets in Japan when the language came about?
In some cases where things obviously originated abroad, like pizza or rugby, it’s the former. In many other cases — like the two you mentioned here — it’s the latter.
There exist native Japanese words for toilet (手洗い・てあらい or 便所・べんじょ for the space where you go pee/poop, 便器・べんき for the actual toilet itself), pet (愛犬・あいけん, 飼い犬/飼い猫・かいいぬ/かいねこ). In cases like these, the loanwords just became more ~~poopular~~ popular over the years for various reasons.
*(edited to fix typo — but leaving it half intact since it’s appropriate to the topic)*
English uses beef from the French word bouef. Do you think they had cows before the french word.