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The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kanji in the wild

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Re: The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kanji in the wild

#101

Post by bsder »

Freak_NL wrote: post #68
WnZ39p0Dgydaz1 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, but you are assuming that you already know the meaning of "kawaii". My point is that if you don't know the word, you can't infer the meaning from the Kanji, except in very simple cases. That's why memorizing Kanji alone really isn't as helpful. Knowing 90% of Kanji meaning and reading doesn't help you much in understanding compounds/words.

> but you are assuming that you already know the meaning of "kawaii". Have you ever been around non-native students of Japanese? This is the one word that is pretty much guaranteed to be known by all with an interest in anything remotely Japanese. Your point is valid, but kawaii is perhaps not the right example.

Actually, I suspect it's a pretty decent example.

Most non-native students of Japanese will almost always encounter that word in hiragana, katakana, or even Romaji--encountering that as a kanji is actually remarkably rare.

The fact that the kanji for kawaii is an ateji makes it one of those odd ducks.

Re: The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kanji in the wild

#102

Post by Grue3 »

WnZ39p0Dgydaz1 wrote: post #37
diego wrote: post #6

The thing is, 90% coverage is not that great. What happens is that you understand common words that make up for a lot of structure, but when an uncommon word appears it's probably important to the sentence. For example, "son, if you go to the plumbf tomorrow morning don't forget to pick up some zlonks." 98% is closer to what you need in order to read a text and have an idea of what's going on. See this article: https…

Being fluent in Japanese as a second language, I agree with this. It's Zipf's law and sounds great, but 90% isn't as useful as it sounds. You'll mostly recognize a single common Kanji of compound words consisting of 2-3 characters, or common structural words. It's a far cry from being able to understand content you find in the wild. Also, "understanding" a Kanji is an ill-defined term. Most Kanji have multiple meanin…

This is why I created an Anki deck that contains both kanji and common words that use those kanji [1]. It even includes statistics on how much each reading is used, so you can estimate if it's worth learning this reading or treat it as an exception.

[1] https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/831167744

Re: The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kanji in the wild

#103

Post by solarmist »

csa wrote: post #81
adrianN wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works perfectly fine in older computer games that don't have the resolution to display Kanji.

It’s functional, but definitely not optimal. Even as a non-native reader, reading 100% kana makes my eyes bleed — I wouldn’t wish that on anyone who actually knows kanji.

I want to agree with you (having spent many hours learning kanji and feeling like after I've learned the kanji, they're valuable to my comprehension), but having learned Korean I can see how you can eventually get along without them and in the end I feel like it's equivalent to Latin and English. Knowing the Latin makes things easier, but I didn't have trouble with English before I knew the roots of words. My understanding now is just richer nowadays.

Re: The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kanji in the wild

#104

Post by solarmist »

bgee wrote: post #58
redthrow wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a native Japanese speaker but as far as the writing system goes, I fully agree with the linguist Geoffrey Pullum's following statement about Chinese characters / kanji: In consequence, this horror-show of a writing system, with its crippling memorization burden for students and malign impediment to progress in science and industry, is the focus of so much intellectual investment and cultural pride that getting ri…

> with its crippling memorization burden for students I always wonder about something that might sound anecdotal: why isn't there any equivalence of "spelling bee" in Hanzi? Or maybe there is? > malign impediment to progress in science and industry What? Do we have any evidence for this?

There is. Kanji Kentei is what it's called. Knowing the archaic meaning and stroke orders of kanji, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji_Kentei

Re: The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kanji in the wild

#105

Post by oska »

redthrow wrote: post #36

If Japanese people just used kana (like Korean people use hangul today), kids in Japan don't have to spend countless hours learning this complex (and often irrational) writing system. http://kanamozi.org/hikari959-04.html > If you really want to be native-level Japanese, kanji are essential There are visually impaired people who have difficulty learning kanji but speak Japanese fluently. Language is not just for peop…

Here we have a native speaker of Japanese being downvoted for giving an opinion on their own writing system that HN readers don't want them to have.

Re: The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kanji in the wild

#106

Post by solarmist »

asutekku wrote: post #70
redthrow wrote: post #36

If Japanese people just used kana (like Korean people use hangul today), kids in Japan don't have to spend countless hours learning this complex (and often irrational) writing system. http://kanamozi.org/hikari959-04.html > If you really want to be native-level Japanese, kanji are essential There are visually impaired people who have difficulty learning kanji but speak Japanese fluently. Language is not just for peop…

Have you read japanese written only with hiragana? The language has so many homonyms it is hard to distinguish them from a text as it is a heavily context based language. I’d argue abolishing kanji and using only hiragana/katakana or roman alphabet makes learning the language harder after the very beginning when your vocab starts to increase.

"I want to agree with you (having spent many hours learning kanji and feeling like after I've learned the kanji, they're valuable to my comprehension), but having learned Korean I can see how you can eventually get along without them and in the end I feel like it's equivalent to Latin and English. Knowing the Latin makes things easier, but I didn't have trouble with English before I knew the roots of words. My understanding now is just richer nowadays."

Quoted from my other reply.

Re: The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kanji in the wild

#107

Post by fenomas »

bgee wrote: post #52

Disclaimer: native Chinese speaker, knows some Japanese, English sufferer Putting aside the argument of whether removing all Hanzi from Japanese text would actually be more efficient or not, the question to me is: why stop at Hanzi? Why not romanizating all the Japanese literature? Surely almost all the reasoning in favor of getting rid of Hanzi can also apply here? edit: grammar

> Why not romanizating all the Japanese literature? Surely almost all the reasoning in favor of getting rid of Hanzi can also apply here?

The difference is that removing kanji from Japanese profoundly changes it, in that tons and tons of words that were previously distinct become indistinguishable. Hence people arguing about getting rid of kanji are arguing about the benefits of the language being easier to learn, vs. the drawbacks of having huge masses of distinct words that are all written the same way.

Whereas, using kana vs. romanization isn't really an important distinction. Nobody argues which is better because they're basically equivalent; anyone who knows one could learn the other in a matter of days or weeks.

Re: The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kanji in the wild

#108

Post by antisemiotic »

Anon1096 wrote: post #61
bgee wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The English language is also quite irregular both in spelling and grammer[sic]. Maybe we should start with it given that children around the world "spend countless hours learning this complex (and often irrational) writing system". Disclaimer: native Chinese speaker, non-fluent Japanese speaker, English sufferer edit: disclaimer and grammar...

Difference is your written English can be riddled with errors and people will still get it. As long as you have some knowledge of spoken English you can get your point across fine. The same is not true for character languages like Mandarin or Japanese.

I can't compare it to Mandarin or Chinese, but as a non-native English speaker, I'd say it depends. Mixing up their/they're, lose/loose, fair/fare, cue/queue, etc, is understandable for me just fine. Having to know that "parody" sometimes means "parity" is when things start getting surreal.

Re: The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kanji in the wild

#109

Post by wingerlang »

xxxpupugo wrote: post #91

This means very little though. Take me as English learner for example. I would say I was only able to understand everyday English without too much of a hassle, after I acquired like around 10k words, which as I just checked had a coverage about 98%+. Noted, it is still NOT enough, actually far from enough. Right now I believe I master around 15k to 20k words, by various estimates, and navigating English on the intern…

How do you check your coverage? Or even how many words you know?

Re: The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kanji in the wild

#110

Post by mlinksva »

bgee wrote: post #46
redthrow wrote: post #36

If Japanese people just used kana (like Korean people use hangul today), kids in Japan don't have to spend countless hours learning this complex (and often irrational) writing system. http://kanamozi.org/hikari959-04.html > If you really want to be native-level Japanese, kanji are essential There are visually impaired people who have difficulty learning kanji but speak Japanese fluently. Language is not just for peop…

The English language is also quite irregular both in spelling and grammer[sic]. Maybe we should start with it given that children around the world "spend countless hours learning this complex (and often irrational) writing system". Disclaimer: native Chinese speaker, non-fluent Japanese speaker, English sufferer edit: disclaimer and grammar...

I hav to agree, demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_refo...
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