|
 Once a
week, the Japan Times, Daily Yomiuri
and Asahi Evening News print an abbreviated list
of batting and pitching leaders. The problem with their
coverage is, however, that they only list the most basic
statistics: batting average and home run totals for
batters, ERA and wins for pitchers. For those craving more complete
statistics, the next step is to purchase one of those 120
yen sports tabloids. In addition to offering a few
titillating pictures of naked women in their back pages,
Japan's sports papers offer great in-depth coverage of
baseball.
Though
the text may be nearly incomprehensible, they offer a lot
of tables and graphics which are much easier to read.
Unfortunately, all the names, even those of foreign
players, are written in Japanese.
By
learning a little katakana (the Japanese writing
system used to convey foreign words), though, you can
quickly learn exactly how your favorite foreign player
compares to others in the league in batting, home runs,
RBIs, on base percentage, and virtually every other
imaginable figure. (And if you want to know how your
favorite Japanese players are doing, why not learn a few
kanji?)
If in
1998 you picked up a copy of Nikkan Sports,
probably the most reputable of the tabloids, you would
have found the batting and pitching leaders a few pages
inside. If you were a Swallows fan, you would have wanted
to know how Dwayne Hosey, Lyle Mouton, Mark Acre and
Travis Driskill were doing.
Even if
you can't tell what the titles mean, if you see a large
table in which the number on the right hand side reads
.333 (batting average), you know that is the batting
leaders. The table for pitchers will have ERA (2.67, for
example) and innings pitched (the only statistic that
features a fraction).
Since
most Japanese players have a two-kanji name, it's pretty
easy to identify the foreign players (whose names are
written with four-to-six katakana letters). Because you
know that " " is the symbol for Yakult (and if you
don't, you can brush up on team kanji), you can narrow down Hosey, Mouton, Acre
and Driskie down to four possibilities (listed below).
But who is who?
 
 
Fortunately
all four names begin with very different sounds (ei,
d, mu and ho).
Since katakana is a phonetic alphabet, you know that each
players' name will start with a different letter. Look at
the list of katakana below, and see if you can guess
which katakana name belongs to which player (but if you
want the answer now...).
Notice
that most of the characters begin with a consonant sound
and end with a vowel. Also, long vowel sounds are usually
followed by a dash while double consonants are marked
with a small tsu character. The only katakana
that can never directly precede a "vowel dash"
is the symbol for "n."
Answers:
| (e--ka--) |
|
Mark Acre |
| (do-ri-su-ki-ru) |
|
Travis Driskill |
| (ho--ji--) |
|
Dwayne Hosey |
| (mu--to-n) |
|
Lyle Mouton |
As you
can see there are few perfect matches when it comes to
applying katakana to foreign words. But with a little
practice, you should be able to read these names and
those of other foreign players without much trouble.
|
