I was trying to find house vocabulary and found multiple (from my perspective)
synonyms (where the synonyms sounded like English). For example, ベッドルーム and
寝室, as well as キッチン and 台所, as well as バスルーム and 風呂場, etc.

What is the difference between the katakana and the kanji versions? Which ones
should be used? Why do the English-sounding versions exist? (<-- for that
question I assumed the kanji versions of the words came first)
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2021-02-26T18:41:16.700
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2021-02-27T03:10:44.547
2021-02-26T18:53:02.220
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question
words loanwords synonyms
Why is there ベッドルーム when there's already 寝室?
Sometimes, loanwords sound simply cool and modern, and traditional words are
too mundane or too direct. English speakers also have imported many new
loanwords from foreign languages (café, siesta, kaizen, ...), but generally
speaking, the influence that English has on other languages is much stronger
than that in the opposite direction.

Semantically, キッチン, ベッドルーム and バスルーム are synonymous with their traditional
(kanji) equivalents. However, these modern katakana versions tend to be
preferred:

  * when the room is western-style (洋室),
  * by young speakers,
  * in metropolitan areas, and
  * in business scenes, especially in ads.

The more of the above conditions are met, the more the katakana versions are
chosen. On the other hand, older speakers living in traditional Japanese-style
houses still usually use 台所, 寝室 (or 寝間) and 風呂場 in daily conversations.

There is another Japanese-specific reason to prefer katakana over kanji for
some words. See [my previous
answer](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/16256/5010).
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2021-02-27T03:01:55.770
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answer