Quote:
Originally Posted by KyleGoetz
Also, in Modern Japanese, most animal species are written in katakana rather than kanji. I honestly have no idea why, but that's the general practice. About the only exceptions are 犬、羊、牛、馬、猫、and 鳥 and those variations. For example, I think you'll see カエル more than 蛙 (frog).
|
I think it must stem out of the science community. Animal names, the more you get into it, use increasingly confusing or little known kanji, so having it in Katakana just makes things easier. There's also a huge amount that don't have a native Japanese name, so it's either a katakana version of the english, or if very obscure, the latin name. Ditto plant names. Sometimes the kanji even seem to represent mutated reflections of the english meaning. Like the the name for the european starling is 星椋鳥. Imagine that popping up in a story. If you'd not seen it before you might be under the impression that these 'grey star birds' are some fantastic creation of the author. Sticking it in katakana ala scientific writings, kind of indicates you're talking about a real animal or plant as opposed to something more vague and poetic. That's my take on it anyway.
In the case of Alice though, it might be in katakana as 'the white rabbit' is the characters ~name~, not just a description of him. Thus he'd be ウサギ to distinguish him from any other うさぎ。