かたかな analysis

   I found the word スナック, snack, and I think it's interesting that the idea is a loan word from another language, because I'd expect most every culture to involve snacks! I think it's written in かたかな　rather than ひらがな because the small snacks themselves, like potato chips and pretzels, are foreign to Japan, so the かたかな is used to advertise that the food will be foreign. スナック also describes the place where you eat snacks, a social bar, so maybe the connection between food and activity is the reason for using かたかな, a sort of activity onomatopoeia.
   Another word I found was　マンション, mansion, which describes an apartment building rather than a conventional mansion.  The word might be borrowed just to mean a very large living space, as both a mansion and an apartment building fit this idea. The word could then be meant to advertise an apartment building positively, as large, or spacious. Similarly, the word ヨット describes a "yacht", but really means a small sailboat.  Both of these show that the words might describe the general idea, but not be a direct translation.
   A celebrity magazine used the word かたかな word アートレス, artist, to describe one of the celebrity artists being interviewed.  What's interesting here is that the kanji word 歌手 has the same meaning as the word  アートレス, but the magazine is using the かたかな word because they think it will attract a younger audience who think that かたかな is more "hip" and "cool" than using ひらがな or kanji, because  かたかな is closer to English.  This is sort of a loan culture then, as the  かたかな is being used to evoke the culture rather than supplement an actual word.  I think this is an interesting difference from the loan words, because it shows how the different alphabets are put into effect by the modern culture and media.
    かたかな seems to be mostly used for loan words and direct translations of words, however there also appear to be other uses for it.  It is mostly used depending on the context and what the speaker is trying to convey.  I like how most かたかな words are very similar to the original words in the language they adapt from, yet have a distinctive Japanese tinge to them, I think it's a really cool way of adopting other culture's into your own.  Hopefully I develop the same interest in kanji soon, because at the moment it's really tough!