Yanwaili ヤンワィリ is a cosmetic brand. It has appeared for few years in Hong Kong. It readily catches my eyes because the brand name is quite interesting and a little bit strange. When I first saw its television advertisement, I wondered that what is the Japanese word mean? Is it a real Japanese word?
The word, ヤンワィリ, is written in katakana but not in hiragana. As Seo sensei taught us last lesson, katakana is used primarily to transcrible foreign loanwords, onomatopoeic and emphasized words. I guess the word covers two functions.
First of all, the producer or the person who give the name to the product might want to emphasize that the word is important and want to catch people's eyes because of popularization(just guess lol). Therefore it might be a emphasized word. And what is the most interesting and attracts me is the remaining function appylied in the word. The pronunciation of ヤンワィリ is similar to cantonese of ''因為你'' which means because of you. Is this represents that ヤンワィリ is a loanword? I think it is not really becuase I can not find the word in Japanese dictionary and JP yahoo search and I can not type ''ワィ'' which is rarely seen.
By the way, I think the way they named its product is funny and the way they present the meaning of ''因為你'' in Japanese character is interesting and subtle although it might be....wrong. I don't know.
(Source: http://hk.image.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=yanwaili&fr=FP-tab-img-t&ei=UTF-8&meta=rst%3Dhk)
Ellen san,
回覆刪除This is very interesting analysis!!!
I also don't know thw word ヤンワィリ.
One thing I can think of is やんわり (meaning "soft") in Japanese.
As you mentioned, this company may try to match the pronunciation with Cantonese. ("Because of you" sounds a good meaning for cosmatics)
Very interesting:)
Seo
せおさん：
回覆刪除I am so happy to hear that.
Thanks for your comment! I have learned a new Japanese word today. やんわり is mean soft which also has a similar pronunciation to the brand name.
thxx ellen.
回覆刪除i wonder why if the name isn't ヤンワイリ but
ヤンワィり ^^ It's mroe direct!
yuzu san:
回覆刪除Thanks for your comment ^^
late comment^^"
回覆刪除But I really love this findings!!! It's really interesting and that's surprise me.
I don't tend to refer Japanese to Cantonese in pronunciation. Usually I think of English when I saw katakana. Even if I see this brand, I still cannot understand what it means.