Japanese explained to programmers • Hacker News Board

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#21

Post by nicolas_t » Tue, Jan 31, 2023, 1:45 PM UTC

karatinversion wrote: post #15

Cruncharoo wrote: post #10

"Being born in France, I was immersed in Japanese culture from a very young age." I fail to see how these two things are connected?

Japanese cultural exports (anime and manga) are quite popular in France, tapping partly into an existing comic book culture.

Yes, for a very long time France was the biggest market for Manga outside of Japan. It's partly due to the fact that France has a thriving local comic book industry and partly due to the fact that we were inundated with imported Anime in the 80s and 90s so there's an entire generation who have been raised with Japanese animes.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#22

Post by kijin » Tue, Jan 31, 2023, 1:45 PM UTC

louhike wrote: post #9

Just a nitpick but the particle “ha”/“は” is not really used to set the subject but the topic or context. The topic or context can often be the subject but it’s an important subtlety. The particle to set the subject is “ga”/“が”.

Just another nitpick: "は" is pronounced as "wa" not "ha" when it is used as the topic marker, as in the well-known greeting "Konnichiwa".

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#23

Post by vvilliamperez » Tue, Jan 31, 2023, 1:45 PM UTC

    request.setURL("serverurl").send()

This style of sentence structure was one of the strangest things to get comfortable with. You have to think a bit differently.

The function chaining makes sense here and I wonder if the language had influence on Ruby's development.

Anyone interested in the language should definitely check out the Genki series. It's written well enough you could fully teach yourself.

https://genki3.japantimes.co.jp/en/intro/ or amazon.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#24

Post by ickoonite » Tue, Jan 31, 2023, 1:48 PM UTC

I have to fundamentally disagree with the premise: Japanese is probably one of the least logical languages on the planet. To wit, it combines the written complexity of Chinese with the spelling inconsistency of English.

The one-to-many relationship between a given kanji and its many pronunciations makes it maddeningly difficult, even for native speakers. 生, for example, has at least nine pronunciations. The only way a programmer might “solve” Japanese would be with copious use of lookup tables or prefix trees.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#25

Post by shiomiru » Tue, Jan 31, 2023, 1:50 PM UTC

Tor3 wrote: post #16

louhike wrote: post #9

Just a nitpick but the particle “ha”/“は” is not really used to set the subject but the topic or context. The topic or context can often be the subject but it’s an important subtlety. The particle to set the subject is “ga”/“が”.

A very important distinction which textbooks often fail to explain clearly. The subject is always and only が. Even if there's no が in the visible sentence.

Not sure if I understand this invisible が idea. Where is it in「私は牛肉を食べます」?

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#26

Post by capableweb » Tue, Jan 31, 2023, 1:51 PM UTC

ickoonite wrote: post #24

I have to fundamentally disagree with the premise: Japanese is probably one of the least logical languages on the planet. To wit, it combines the written complexity of Chinese with the spelling inconsistency of English. The one-to-many relationship between a given kanji and its many pronunciations makes it maddeningly difficult, even for native speakers. 生, for example, has at least nine pronunciations. The only way…

Question: What are your mother tongue(s)?

Similarly to people thinking less of the country they were born/raised, I tend to find that people always think their first language(s) are the less logical ones, maybe that fits in here as well. Some sort of bias it seems.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#27

Post by kijin » Tue, Jan 31, 2023, 1:51 PM UTC

vvilliamperez wrote: post #23

request.setURL("serverurl").send() This style of sentence structure was one of the strangest things to get comfortable with. You have to think a bit differently. The function chaining makes sense here and I wonder if the language had influence on Ruby's development. Anyone interested in the language should definitely check out the Genki series. It's written well enough you could fully teach yourself. https://genki3.j…

The Japanese language does lend itself easily to an endless chain of run-on sentences where the subject quickly becomes blurry. Very useful for programmers and politicians alike. :p

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#28

Post by louhike » Tue, Jan 31, 2023, 1:52 PM UTC

kijin wrote: post #22

louhike wrote: post #9

Just a nitpick but the particle “ha”/“は” is not really used to set the subject but the topic or context. The topic or context can often be the subject but it’s an important subtlety. The particle to set the subject is “ga”/“が”.

Just another nitpick: "は" is pronounced as "wa" not "ha" when it is used as the topic marker, as in the well-known greeting "Konnichiwa".

Yes but the romanji is still “ha”.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#29

Post by louhike » Tue, Jan 31, 2023, 1:55 PM UTC

shiomiru wrote: post #25

Tor3 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very important distinction which textbooks often fail to explain clearly. The subject is always and only が. Even if there's no が in the visible sentence.

Not sure if I understand this invisible が idea. Where is it in「私は牛肉を食べます」?

That may seem strange but that would be 「私が」私は牛乳を食べます

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#30

Post by raverbashing » Tue, Jan 31, 2023, 1:55 PM UTC

> The japanese standard library offers a bunch of chainable functions to add meaning to your primitive types.

English and French work in the same way.

However roles are usually determined by word order. But in essence it's the same thing as obj.do_stuff(), 'obj' is the thing that do_stuff.