Stefan Persson wrote: > Mike Ayers wrote: > > I have not seen > > katakana joined to kanji (or romaji), and suspect that such does not occur. > > There are a few cases, e.g. ソ連 (So-Ren: Soviet Union), but that could > also be written as two kanji as 蘇連 (which is however very rare in > modern Japanese).
It's actually quite common, depending on how you choose to construe "joined". Certainly, mixed katakana/kanji lexical items occur all the time. Japanese for PGA: puroogorufukyookai ^^^^^^^^^^^======= katakana kanji PGA Championship: zenbeipuroo ======^^^^^ kanji katakana It's true that katakana aren't normally used the way okurigana are, to write out the grammatically changeable suffixal portion of verb stems written in kanji. But that's rather beside the point when kanji and katakana are rather freely mixed in nominal compounds of all sorts. By the way, the So-Ren example is just an abbreviation of the same kind of pattern I show above: Japanese for Soviet Union: sobietorenhoo ==> soren ^^^^^^^====== ^^=== katakana kanji This process is an onrushing, accelerating one. If you look at early 20th century Japanese materials, it is rather uncommon, but if you look at contemporary Japanese writing -- particularly the sort seen in popular culture, which is the leading edge of this kind of change, it is all over the place. Katakana is sweeping in as it carries with it all the English (and other) language material rapidly moving into Japanese, along with all the other popular functions of katakana. Other examples from corporate names: fujizerokkusu (Fuji Xerox) ====^^^^^^^^^ tookyoogasu (Tokyo Gas) =======^^^^ nihonai·bii·emu (IBM Japan) =====^^ ^^^ ^^^ Then there's always that all-purpose fixer-upper: nenchakuteepu (duct tape, adhesive tape) ========^^^^^ --Ken