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Japan has changed in important and visible ways

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Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#441

Post by BrandoElFollito »

hogepiyo wrote: post #92

It's difficult to take the author of the article being repudiated (Wingfield-Hayes) seriously when he has lived here for over 10 years and doesn't speak the language. Any other person who lived in a country for a decade and can't converse in the language would be (rightfully imo) shamed for it. Idk, say what you like about how journalists operate but living somewhere for a decade and not speaking the language doesn't…

In France it is virtually impossible to function of you do not speak good French.

In a company you will miss all the important things that are usually conveyed in casual French (this includes subtleties that change the meaning of a sentence).

Yes, people will speak English with you, usually fluently (and with plenty of errors), but this is not the language of choice for the off the record conversations.

Outside of work you will get by in supermarkets, but for more complicated shops your will have problems.

For the administration it is clear: without being fluent in French there is no way to do anything. Even if you are a native speaker you understand just half of it and hope for the best.

People in the street speak English [citation needed] but they will get tired after some time and then the English becomes unbearable.

Source: native French married to a foreigner who struggles to understand everything (not to mention the subtleties) after 15 years of active use of the language.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#442

Post by BlueTemplar »

petodo wrote: post #436
BlueTemplar wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be very surprised if in the case you all stayed in C, your kid wouldn't adopt at least some of the culture/ethnicity/values of C, which would be through the language of C (or possibly a C-derived subculture/creole).

sure, that's expected, but it won't be thanks to language, but because of the enviroment regardless of language

But language is part of the environment : the communication in the environment and understanding of the environment is mediated through language !

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#443

Post by BlueTemplar »

petodo wrote: post #389
BlueTemplar wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That community is the one where your kids will grow up and adopt at least some if not most of the values of. You are deliberately deciding to exclude yourself from it, which is likely to have bad consequences for you and your kids (since you won't be competent to help them).

For starters I speak local language of country where I live and this dumb discussion is hypothetical when I defend people unwilling to learn local language, because they can get by with English which is perfectly fine and I have urge to have small talk with other people while they work even in my home country. But yes excluding myself from sheep in whatever community whatever language they speak whether my mother ton…

You won't be (as) competent (as you could be) because your understanding of the environment is going to be lacking. And would be tremendously more so if you weren't even competent in the language.

As an adult, you might (or might not) be able to mostly isolate yourself from your environment and its influence on you (probably not if you have to work). IMHO you are foolish to expect your kids to be able to do so (and it's not like it would be even a good idea to try !)

"Independent" doesn't mean "of the society", it means, on the contrary, adapted to it !

(No question that having critical thinking is good, but remember how it starts with trying to being critical of your own biases, a good portion of which stem from your own history : education, upbringing, culture...)

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#444

Post by jerryzh »

hogepiyo wrote: post #92

It's difficult to take the author of the article being repudiated (Wingfield-Hayes) seriously when he has lived here for over 10 years and doesn't speak the language. Any other person who lived in a country for a decade and can't converse in the language would be (rightfully imo) shamed for it. Idk, say what you like about how journalists operate but living somewhere for a decade and not speaking the language doesn't…

I don't get all the replies to this comment.

hogepiyo was saying someone who lived for a decade and cannot speak native language does not have enough credit for us to believe his/her comment on the entire country's changes. The fact that people do can live this way does not change this point.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#445

Post by HKH2 »

petodo wrote: post #412
HKH2 wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really wish Chinese switched completely to pinyin That's like wishing English would switch to IPA because English spelling is wildly inconsistent - which English would you choose? People who speak different dialects can still understand each other using written Chinese, whereas Pinyin is for Mandarin only.

almost everyone using smartphones and computers already use pinyin anyway when they are inputting Chinese characters, it's just redundant at this point, part of tradition without practical meaning

> almost everyone using smartphones and computers already use pinyin anyway when they are inputting Chinese characters

Cantonese speakers don't use Pinyin.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#446

Post by selimthegrim »

epups wrote: post #397
rayiner wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> John von Neumann - a gasp immigrant - may have more to do with how America looks like today than anybody alive in the 1800s Not at all. Bangladesh, where I’m from, has computers too, but its government, institutions, infrastructure, constitution, etc., are still what Bangladeshis and the British created. Society is a product of culture, and culture runs deep and is extremely sticky.

I'm not sure I understand your point here. All those things you mentioned are not at all a product of the people of Bangladesh alone, they are a collective effort. You live in a system of government invented in Europe, your infrastructure is more and more owned by China, your predominant religion is not from Bangladesh originally. You talk about countries as if they are some independent silos of people who have lived…

1947-71 doesn't exist according to him.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#447

Post by soraminazuki »

Tainnor wrote: post #417
soraminazuki wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Retro Japanese games displayed text in all katakana because of technical limitations. But it didn't stick, for good reasons. It's incredibly hard to read. Like, imagine reading an ASCII text in hexadecimal representation. That's how it feels when reading a sufficiently long text in all hiragana or katakana. Abolishing kanjis might've worked for the Korean language, but Korean isn't Japanese. They're entirely differen…

It would work fine. Japanese people can read Kana-only text - foreigners often can't because they aren't as used to it, but Japanese children read books mostly in Hiragana and they know what things sound like because they speak the language long before they know how to read it.

Japanese children are able to cope with all-hiraganas only because the text they read are so short and simple, accompanied by pictures. No other kind of books are written in all hiraganas, meaning that no person on earth has the required training. Nor do I think it's practical because there are likely to be tons of disambiguation problems with hiragana text.

Also, as I said, what worked for Korea centuries ago won't work for modern day Japan. Hangul was developed in an entirely different era where most people was illiterate, and the means for scaling education was non-existent by today's standards. It therefore made sense to reduce the number of letters in the alphabet. However, in modern age Japan, you'll be hard pressed to find a healthy person who can't read or write. There's no reason nor desire to switch to hiraganas only, and every reason otherwise. Changing a language is probably a terrible idea if there's no documented instance of native speakers actually wanting the change.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#448

Post by Tainnor »

soraminazuki wrote: post #447
Tainnor wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would work fine. Japanese people can read Kana-only text - foreigners often can't because they aren't as used to it, but Japanese children read books mostly in Hiragana and they know what things sound like because they speak the language long before they know how to read it.

Japanese children are able to cope with all-hiraganas only because the text they read are so short and simple, accompanied by pictures. No other kind of books are written in all hiraganas, meaning that no person on earth has the required training. Nor do I think it's practical because there are likely to be tons of disambiguation problems with hiragana text. Also, as I said, what worked for Korea centuries ago won't…

> Nor do I think it's practical because there are likely to be tons of disambiguation problems with hiragana text.

Humans are good at disambiguating in context. Those ambiguities can arise in spoken language too (minus those that are differentiated by pitch accent, but that still leaves enough room for homonyms).

> Changing a language is probably a terrible idea if there's no documented instance of native speakers actually wanting the change.

I agree but that has something to do with sociological reasons. I wasn't advocating for changing Japanese.

As late as the Edo period, there were entire genres of literature that were written almost entirely in Kana: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanaz%C5%8Dshi

Clearly, people were able to read that.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#449

Post by Tainnor »

petodo wrote: post #437
Tainnor wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since that shows ignorance to learn basic necessity to exist in present world and lack of education and world views (I mean how the heck can you learn anything about the world not speaking English just from limited local sources). My parents' generation learned Latin and French instead of English, and there's an argument to be made that you also can't really understand a lot of the world without at least some passi…

That's not really an excuse, my retired father learned Latin, German (to the level he was translator) and Russian and he still late in his age learned also at least basic English. Meanwhile my ignorant low educated mother learned just very basic German needed in shop to be able to communicate with German speaking customers. I can cut you some slack if you are above 50 and know at least some other languages, but hones…

I bet I could find 10 things that "a reasonable person" should know / be able to do, which you would utterly fail at.

The scope of human knowledge and abilities is so vast, it's really strange that you'd fault anybody for not having the exact same interests as you.

Also, knowing "some basic English" is not nearly enough to enjoy series, movies etc. or to read news in English.

Also, the way you speak about your own mother... man, you seem to have some anger issues.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#450

Post by Tainnor »

petodo wrote: post #284
anlsh wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let me introduce you to wild idea that language is just tool and has nothing to do really with the country/culture This is a wild idea because it's false. It's hard to be a part of any culture if you don't speak the language. All you've said is that knowing a language doesn't make you part of a culture, which nobody would disagree with in the first place

We are talking here about country and country's culture. What you say works for homogenous societies, but there are plenty of countries with multiple official languages where none of the citizens would be part of their country culture then, look at Switzerland, Belgium, US, etc., these countries don't really have single country culture defined by one common language, but at same time I'm sure all these people living…

> Switzerland

Have you ever lived in Switzerland? Because I grew up there and if there's ever a group of people who don't accept you if you don't speak their dialect it's the Swiss Germans.

Swiss languages are regionally segregated, meaning that if you want to settle in to Zurich, you'll need to speak German (and at least understand Swiss German), if you want to live in Geneva you'll have to know French and you won't get anywhere in Lugano without knowing Italian.

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