I liked the beginning and expected the next word after "mouth" to look almost the same, with a subtle change, which would be a logical extension. But it was quite a jump from a simple square (口) to god-knows-what (食). Also, why 食 is translated as "Eclipse" in Google?
Maybe because in the eclipse the moon eats the sun.
Japanese writing system basics
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Re: Japanese writing system basics
#12I liked the beginning and expected the next word after "mouth" to look almost the same, with a subtle change, which would be a logical extension. But it was quite a jump from a simple square (口) to god-knows-what (食). Also, why 食 is translated as "Eclipse" in Google?
Maybe because in the eclipse the moon eats the sun.
Thus proving that symbolic meaning applied at the glyph level is too cumbersome to be practical because it requires pure memorization of all possible combinations of glyphs and conjugations thereof.
Re: Japanese writing system basics
#13How many symbols are there? And how would the keyboard look like though?
Hah, and there's the kicker. In Japanese the most common input method is phonetic, either with a latin alphabet keyboard or a hiragana keyboard. The IME kicks in and has you select the ideogram you mean, so in reality it would save you no time typing and actually cost you time.
Re: Japanese writing system basics
#14Japanese is an unusual language to write. It's influenced by Chinese (in two separate eras), English and perhaps many other systems. Symbols alone aren't a perfect fit for the language (since they add tense and such), but neither is an English style alphabet.
Why wouldn't an "English style" (roman alphabet) style alphabet work? Romaji works just fine, albeit with the addition of a macron diacritic. Though if it really was the primary writing system, a way to notate tone accent might be necessary (My gut says no, it carries relatively little semantic weight).
It doesn't work due to the insane amount of homophones. When you are speaking with someone you have context and you can discern the meaning of what it's said. But random words or texts can change it's meaning depending of what character is used. And the tone system doesn't help as it can be seen in Chinese pinyin.
For example, how many kanji can be read as 'shuu'/しゅう: http://jisho.org/search/%E3%81%97%E3%82%85%E3%81%86%20%23kan...
Try to do that with tones.
Re: Japanese writing system basics
#15How many symbols are there? And how would the keyboard look like though?
A few thousand, with most adults knowing ~1000-2000, but you can get pretty far just knowing the 250 most common.
The keyboards look about the same. The trick is there is also a phonetic alphabet that you can use to compose the ideographic characters. Basically Japanese input methods work kind of like autocompletion in an IDE. You spell the word you want using phonetic characters and a little popup lets you pick the ideographic transliteration when you hit the space bar.
Here's a typical Japanese keyboard https://s7.postimg.io/i5fg1c1kr/SKB_KG3_BK_FM.png There are a few different kinds with slightly different ways of working but they're more or less the same. A lot of Japanese just use a standard American layout and spell the phonetic characters using Romaji (Japanese phonetic characters transliterated to Latin characters).
Re: Japanese writing system basics
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why wouldn't an "English style" (roman alphabet) style alphabet work? Romaji works just fine, albeit with the addition of a macron diacritic. Though if it really was the primary writing system, a way to notate tone accent might be necessary (My gut says no, it carries relatively little semantic weight).
There are a lot of homophones between Chinese loanwords in Japanese. A writing system like Romaji that only records the phonetic information would be no more useful than just hiragana (which might then arguably more useful as it aligns with the syllables?)
Spaces carry a lot of semantic weight, as do other components such as capitalisation and punctuation (most of which in use in Japan is borrowed from romaji anyway).
iimagineitdgetprettyannoyingtryingtoreadenglishifitwaswrittenlikethisbutitshardtotellwithouthavingdonesofortwentyyears
Re: Japanese writing system basics
#17If 口 substitutes for mouth -- the adjective form of "mouth" is "oral", an etymologically (and audibly!) distinct word. Should that use 口 too?
If king is 王, kingly is 王ly, and royal is 王al, what is regal?
If mouth is 口 and mouthed is 口ed, why would ate be 食t rather than 食ed?
Japan misinterpreted the Chinese writing system (already terrible) into easily the worst writing system known to mankind. It won't look cute when you go beyond two symbols.
Re: Japanese writing system basics
#18That was cool. Interesting enough, you can come to the same conclusion with emojis.
Re: Japanese writing system basics
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a lot of homophones between Chinese loanwords in Japanese. A writing system like Romaji that only records the phonetic information would be no more useful than just hiragana (which might then arguably more useful as it aligns with the syllables?)
Spaces carry a lot of semantic weight, as do other components such as capitalisation and punctuation (most of which in use in Japan is borrowed from romaji anyway). iimagineitdgetprettyannoyingtryingtoreadenglishifitwaswrittenlikethisbutitshardtotellwithouthavingdonesofortwentyyears
Well, in English spaces certainly carry weight, partly because the word unit has so many characters. In languages like Chinese and Japanese, units /are/ the characters (or a few of them). Particles then make natural separators in strings of kanji.
Re: Japanese writing system basics
#20This was an interesting symbol to choose for an internet explanation. It took me a while to realise that the rectangle is actually the symbol that I'm supposed to see, rather than a missing glyph.