41–50 of 120 posts
Blog author here. Surprised to see one of my old posts on the front page while browsing Hacker News. It's interesting to reflect on what has improved since I wrote it, and what has not. Both Android and iOS, for instance, provide mechanisms to get this right, if you know to use them and expose them for those locales (and only those locales). For example, both have a Contact object that contain corresponding phonetic-…
Am I missing something subtle in this Kanji example, or all 4 names actually written the same?: "There are four Japanese women whose names you have to sort: Junko, Atsuko, Kiyoko, and Akiko. This does not seem difficult, until they each show you how they write their names in kanji: 淳子 (Junko) 淳子 (Atsuko) 淳子 (Kiyoko) 淳子 (Akiko)" I'm not familiar with Japanese at all (and have never had to deal with localization beyond…
Many kanji have numerous pronunciations. I have a dictionary extension on my browser that may help illustrate: https://i.imgur.com/Nftkjks.png According to the dictionary, the word 淳 can be read as jun, shun, atsui, atsu, atsushi, kiyo, kiyoshi, makoto, or sunao. And evidently this is not fully complete, since Akiko can also use that character. It's definitely one of the more annoying parts of Japanese, and ultimatel…
I think the "ko" suffix comes from the second Kanji character "子" which means child (I think, it has been over a decade since i studied Japanese but that particular Kanji character looks familiar to me). So I believe it is similar to how a lot of English surnames end in "son" (Johnson, Anderson, Harrison) etc.
Am I missing something subtle in this Kanji example, or all 4 names actually written the same?: "There are four Japanese women whose names you have to sort: Junko, Atsuko, Kiyoko, and Akiko. This does not seem difficult, until they each show you how they write their names in kanji: 淳子 (Junko) 淳子 (Atsuko) 淳子 (Kiyoko) 淳子 (Akiko)" I'm not familiar with Japanese at all (and have never had to deal with localization beyond…
> wildly different pronunciations for some spelled the same The fundamental point to understand is that those names aren't spelled the same, they're written the same. The writings and readings are essentially distinct things; neither is a representation of the other. (As an aside, Japanese doesn't really have spelling as we think of it. It has phonetic characters, but their names map 1:1 with their pronunciation, so…
Not quite, eg ki'yu vs kyu vs ki'u and n'a (んあ) vs na (な), but unlike in english those tend to be pathological corner cases that you can either ignore entirely in practice or easily handle (eg the Ci+yV CyV convention).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many kanji have numerous pronunciations. I have a dictionary extension on my browser that may help illustrate: https://i.imgur.com/Nftkjks.png According to the dictionary, the word 淳 can be read as jun, shun, atsui, atsu, atsushi, kiyo, kiyoshi, makoto, or sunao. And evidently this is not fully complete, since Akiko can also use that character. It's definitely one of the more annoying parts of Japanese, and ultimatel…
>According to the dictionary, the word 淳 can be read as jun, shun, atsui, atsu, atsushi, kiyo, kiyoshi, makoto, or sunao. And evidently this is not fully complete, since Akiko can also use that character. I think the "ko" suffix comes from the second Kanji character "子" which means child (I think, it has been over a decade since i studied Japanese but that particular Kanji character looks familiar to me). So I believ…
But there is no similarity to English (or any language) patronymics. 子 was used as an element of girls' names because it's good for a girl to be youthful. "Johnson" lets you know that the person is the son of John, not that the person is himself named John.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many kanji have numerous pronunciations. I have a dictionary extension on my browser that may help illustrate: https://i.imgur.com/Nftkjks.png According to the dictionary, the word 淳 can be read as jun, shun, atsui, atsu, atsushi, kiyo, kiyoshi, makoto, or sunao. And evidently this is not fully complete, since Akiko can also use that character. It's definitely one of the more annoying parts of Japanese, and ultimatel…
>According to the dictionary, the word 淳 can be read as jun, shun, atsui, atsu, atsushi, kiyo, kiyoshi, makoto, or sunao. And evidently this is not fully complete, since Akiko can also use that character. I think the "ko" suffix comes from the second Kanji character "子" which means child (I think, it has been over a decade since i studied Japanese but that particular Kanji character looks familiar to me). So I believ…
Now that I think about it though, I've never seen that read as Akiko before (or Akiko written that way). I don't see it on any websites and Microsoft IME doesn't list that as a version of Akiko at all (~10 pages of suggestions). Makes me curious about where the author got that reading from...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>According to the dictionary, the word 淳 can be read as jun, shun, atsui, atsu, atsushi, kiyo, kiyoshi, makoto, or sunao. And evidently this is not fully complete, since Akiko can also use that character. I think the "ko" suffix comes from the second Kanji character "子" which means child (I think, it has been over a decade since i studied Japanese but that particular Kanji character looks familiar to me). So I believ…
You're right that 子 means child. But there is no similarity to English (or any language) patronymics. 子 was used as an element of girls' names because it's good for a girl to be youthful. "Johnson" lets you know that the person is the son of John, not that the person is himself named John.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> wildly different pronunciations for some spelled the same The fundamental point to understand is that those names aren't spelled the same, they're written the same. The writings and readings are essentially distinct things; neither is a representation of the other. (As an aside, Japanese doesn't really have spelling as we think of it. It has phonetic characters, but their names map 1:1 with their pronunciation, so…
> their names map 1:1 with their pronunciation Not quite , eg ki'yu vs kyu vs ki'u and n'a (んあ) vs na (な), but unlike in english those tend to be pathological corner cases that you can either ignore entirely in practice or easily handle (eg the Ci+yV CyV convention).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems odd because it is. I live in Japan, tried to learn Japanese like I did learn English and German: through reading, as the true asocial geek I am. Well, that's not possible unless you know about 1000 kanjis, unless you stick with kids book or some mangas (which, actually, I am not that interested in) To learn Japanese you need to learn to speak it first. I stopped caring about kanjis wen I realized that a 15 y…
And as a counter example, I like kanji and learned Japanese by reading (though I also like manga, so perhaps it was helpful). I find kanji very helpful in learning vocabulary. In fact, I actually measured how fast I could learn vocabulary containing kanji I didn't know by learning the kanji first, versus learning the vocabulary phonetically. It was about the same. However, as there are only about 2200 kanji in the li…
The same ambiguity mentioned in this article that makes it hard to learn and approach for beginners can be and has been wielded to great effect by writers in both literary and comedic works in ways that have no real equivalent in languages without similar mechanisms.
It's yet another one of those things that makes Japanese such a joy to learn.
Blog author here. Surprised to see one of my old posts on the front page while browsing Hacker News. It's interesting to reflect on what has improved since I wrote it, and what has not. Both Android and iOS, for instance, provide mechanisms to get this right, if you know to use them and expose them for those locales (and only those locales). For example, both have a Contact object that contain corresponding phonetic-…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> their names map 1:1 with their pronunciation Not quite , eg ki'yu vs kyu vs ki'u and n'a (んあ) vs na (な), but unlike in english those tend to be pathological corner cases that you can either ignore entirely in practice or easily handle (eg the Ci+yV CyV convention).
All of the examples you mentioned are pronounced differently, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
k-ee-y-oo and k-y-oo are distinct pronunciations that are both written as kiyu (きゅ) (also not 1:1, though this could be considered a accent maybe?)
I wasn't trying to make a point, beyond "spelling a [any] word is not just the same thing as saying it".