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Japanese writing system basics

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Re: Japanese writing system basics

#181

Post by cthalupa »

gizmo686 wrote: post #114
fenomas wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also think that the Latin alphabet could be easily used for Japanese Writing Japanese entirely in Latin characters would be no different from writing it entirely in hiragana. Have you ever tried reading that way?

Kind of. In my first semester of japanese we worked in hiragana+spaces. Having read English language papers on Japanese linguistics, I can also say that reading the Latin is easy too.

That sounds like an absolutely miserable experience. I'd rather be forced to look up every 3rd or 4th kanji than try to deal with all hiragana writing.

Re: Japanese writing system basics

#182

Post by wingerlang »

tempestn wrote: post #166
sampo wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example English has according to the Oxford dictionary 171,476 words in current use excluding inflections, and several technical and regional vocabularies. Here is a website which questions you with some random sample of words from an English dictionary, mixed with randomly generated non-words. Then it estimates the percentage of English words you know. http://vocabulary.ugent.be/wordtest/start I am a non-nativ…

I'm curious: did you only answer yes to the words whose meanings you knew, or to anything that you knew was indeed a word? There were some that were pretty obviously words, but I wasn't certain the exact meaning (although I could guess), so I answered no. Ended up with 77% (as a native speaker). Apparently average for native speakers is 67%, so 77-89 as a non-native speaker sounds really good.

I just did it, and I answered yes to words I knew, or knew that were actual words but I didn't know the exact meaning of. Like Argon, I know it is something related to chemistry but I don't actually know what it is. Some words were compound words which I am not sure would be in a dictionary, but still valid words.

I got 73% and I didn't say 'yes' to any fake words.

73% is apparently "This is a high level for a native speaker."

Re: Japanese writing system basics

#183

Post by vorg »

rett12 wrote: post #14
akavi wrote: post #5

Earlier 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).

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%…

Homophones aren't a problem. Just use a silent radical in front of kana sequences. Swapping 2000 kanji for about 200 radicals is a good enough "90% solution". Some possible examples from the first page of results from you link:

    主 = 主シュウ
    集 = 木シュウ
    终 = 幺シュウ
    州 = 川シュウ
    衆 = 血シュウ
    就 = 京シュウ
    秋 = 禾シュウ
    收 = 又シュウ
    週 = 辶シュウ
    周 = 周シュウ
    宗 = 宗シュウ
    修 = 彡シュウ
    習 = 白シュウ
    執 = 幸シュウ
    秀 = 乃シュウ
    渋 = 氵シュウ
    拾 = 扌シュウ
    袭 = 衣シュウ
    捜 = 扌シュウ
    祝 = 礻シュウ
There'll be some duplicates, especially looking at all 213 found, but it solves most of the problem of homophones.

Re: Japanese writing system basics

#184

Post by cthalupa »

akavi wrote: post #23
rett12 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%…

Why do you have less context in writing than in speech? I'd be willing to bet heavily that the vast majority of those "homophones" are primarily writing-only, domain specific or archaic "shorthands", which are referred to in speech with slightly more verbose alternatives. Switching to a non-character based system would admittedly in that case mean some domain specific writing would be slightly less compact, but that…

Because you are going to select different phrases and words while speaking than you are when writing. Even with context clues from the conversation, it can at times be confusing, so you have to explain what you meant. Usually it's verbal, sometimes it's 空書 (sky writing). To avoid having to do this frequently, people will often adopt a subset of the language that is less prone to confusing homophones for their vocal communication.

It creates a situation where you have people who have wildly different voices in their writing than they do in their everyday speaking, which is an interesting phenomenon. (To me, at least)

Re: Japanese writing system basics

#185

Post by matthewrudy »

imron wrote: post #173

In Chinese 食 is pronounced shí. As someone who speaks Chinese, I got a chuckle out of reading 'put your favorite snack in your 口 and 食t it!' due to the association in my mind of that character and its Chinese pronunciation, immediately followed by a 't'.

Japanese use of Kanji is usually more similar to Cantonese (Cantonese is a much older language than modern Mandarin)

So in Mandarin you wouldn't find people using 食 as a verb, but in cantonese it is the correct verb.

In Cantonese it's pronounced something like "sekk"

("sihk" in Yale romanisation, but I think if you're not familiar with Yale you'd try and read that "sick" or "sikh")

Edit: "sikh"

Re: Japanese writing system basics

#186

Post by force_reboot »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #178
Grue3 wrote: post #177

入 means "enter", 口 means "mouth". 入口 means... "entrance". Actually for most kanji there is no single meaning. Some meanings might even have nothing in common with each other, because they've been based on ancient Chinese wordplay or something.

Entering the mouth of the building?

Almost certainly. One fascinating aspect of language is that many metaphors that are baked into language appear in many languages. E.g. In English we can form the future tense with modal verbs, "I will..." and "I am going to..." and in Chinese there are similar modal verbs "我要..." and "我去...". In both languages the idea of intention, or motion, are used as a metaphor in forming the future tense. Or 加油, an expression of encouragement similar to "put your foot on it" which has no equivalent in English, but does in Danish, "giv det gas".

Re: Japanese writing system basics

#187

Post by dhfromkorea »

Another interesting side-effect that the compactness of Chinese symbols (other variations: Hanja in Korean, Kanji in Japanese and so forth) allowed was a higher chance of survival against natural disasters like wild fires or crimes like thefts or vandalism.

It was/is far easier to ensure redundancy of scripts and books since the costs of reprinting/copying was far lower compared to other forms of phonetic systems.

The compactness explains how so many archaic, buddhist scripts could survive to this day.

Re: Japanese writing system basics

#188

Post by dhfromkorea »

Another interesting side-effect that the compactness of Chinese symbols (other variations: Hanja in Korean, Kanji in Japanese and so forth) allowed was a higher chance of survival against natural disasters like fire or crimes like thefts or vandalism.

It was/is far easier to ensure redundancy of scripts and books since the costs of reprinting/copying was far lower compared to other forms of phonetic systems. The compactness explains how so many archaic, buddhist scripts could survive to this day.

Re: Japanese writing system basics

#189

Post by Symbiote »

force_reboot wrote: post #186
colejohnson66 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entering the mouth of the building?

Almost certainly. One fascinating aspect of language is that many metaphors that are baked into language appear in many languages. E.g. In English we can form the future tense with modal verbs, "I will..." and "I am going to..." and in Chinese there are similar modal verbs "我要..." and "我去...". In both languages the idea of intention, or motion, are used as a metaphor in forming the future tense. Or 加油, an expression…

"Put your foot on it" means the accelerator / gas pedal, that seems very much equivalent.

Re: Japanese writing system basics

#190

Post by kozhevnikov »

kazinator wrote: post #80
cynix wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not exactly a rectangle though, the two downward strokes extend slightly past the bottom horizontal stroke.

In handwriting, or calligraphy, it might be rendered like this, in fact: 2 --------+ 1 \ / \ ---- / 3 The three strokes not all connected, and the left and right sides tapering downward a bit (exaggerated in the ASCII above). Image search for "kuchi-no kanji + shodou (calligraphy)": https://www.google.com/search?q=%E5%8F%A3%E3%81%AE%E6%BC%A2%... It seems there are two schools on the relationship between stroke 2 or 3…

Wikipedia has stoke order animations for radicals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/口

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