In the dictionary, karaoke is written with the 'kara' in hiragana and the 'oke' in katakana. There was an alternative writing in all katakana, but I was wondering why the primary one has both.
It's due to the fact 空 (から) meaning which is empty and オーケストラ (meaning orchestra which is taken from a foreign word) and when they combine ~からオケ. That is why, it is rarely written as: 空オケ. You can write カラオケ no problem with it at all.
I looked at its etymology and apparently it is a combination of words から (empty) and オーケストラ(orchestra). Since ‘kara’ comes from a Japanese word, it is written in hiragana, and since ‘orchestra’ is borrowed from English, ‘oke’ uses katakana.
I genuinely have no idea why the dictionary has からオケ as the primary reading... I guess to make a point of its etymology. カラオケ is by far the most common way to write it. It's not even close XD
