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Japanese explained to programmers

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Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#211

Post by visarga »

wst_ wrote: post #76
ickoonite wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but it’s a messy model that tells you that 生 is pronounced nama or sometimes ki, 生きる ikiru, 生じる shōjiru, 学生 gakusei, 生む umu…

All the examples you gave are pretty obvious to read because of suffixes, called okurigana, or the other kanji next to it. Problem arises only when the kanji stands alone and that doesn't happen so often as people think. Even when it does, most often than not, you can infer the reading from the context.

In some cases you need to read the whole phrase to know what a word meant and how to read it.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#212

Post by kazinator »

bernawil wrote: post #209
brozaman wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're being sarcastic, but as a Spanish native speaker I'd say English precisely excels on how well it handles ambiguity and certainty. I also hate with passion that it's not written as it sounds (I think everyone who comes from a language with very regular pronunciation will tell you this) but I don't think this is a real issue on a daily basis. On the other hand Spanish handles other things better. I'd say…

> I'd say English precisely excels on how well it handles ambiguity and certainty. I'm curious about this. I mean, English doesn't even have different words for singular/plural "you".

English has a singular first person pronoun, thou. It has fallen out of use except in religious texts and ironic writing which seeks a religious tone.

It's a cognate of the German du, Latin and French tu, Slovak and Czech ty and others.

Some languages do fine without plurals at all.

The ambiguity in you isn't just between plural and singular, but between a rhetorical you and actual.

You should eat your vegetables. Who, me in particular? Or everyone?

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#213

Post by celu »

Adverblessly wrote: post #84
capableweb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I tend to find that people always think their first language(s) are the less logical ones As a counter example, I think my first language (Hebrew) is more logical than English. It makes a lot more sense to me to put words that modify or add detail to other words after the word they are modifying instead of before (most notably, it seems strange to put adjectives before the noun they apply to, since logically you sh…

As a speaker of English, and Spanish, which has the adjectives after, I feel like putting the adjectives first is more expressive.

"A hot, juicy chicken leg" would sound less exciting if it was said "A chicken leg, hot, juicy" because the listener would first imagine the wrong chicken leg.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#214

Post by detrites »

ickoonite wrote: post #69
detrites wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on your goals. If the goal is speaking and understanding it being spoken, it's one of the most orderly and consistent languages there is, with (non-typically for languages) clear and simple rules, grammar and modifiers. Reading is similar until Kanji comes along and messes things up, but by that stage you could probably get by pretty well, both in the country, and by ingesting materials with simplified Hir…

> Reading is similar until Kanji comes along I mean, sure, if you exclude the most complicated writing system currently in use in any natural language, Japanese is simple. I hear Chinese is really easy too if you just do everything in pinyin. Right, sarcasm off. Yes, the grammar is pretty simple. It has a mere three irregular verbs. The inflection can be somewhat unwieldy (温かくなかったら atatakakunakattara, if it were not…

> outside of very limited contexts, furigana

Sarcasm aside, I only take issue with this.

The context here is learning Japanese, ie a beginner. A typical way to do that with any language is to use the enormous wealth of resources aimed at either kids or learners. Including in this case many popular manga.

It's a context within which, of course, Furigana is widely available, as it's one of the ways Japanese themselves learn Kanji. And I would guess probably why it even exists, though I'm sure you could correct me on that.

Your view of Japanese seems to be from a very high level, encompassing its totality or close to it. At that level your assertions may be correct and relevant, but that's not where my comments, nor the OP with their post, are aiming.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#215

Post by philsnow »

ickoonite wrote: post #36
capableweb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My mother tongue is English. I studied Japanese to degree level so I feel at least moderately qualified to comment on it. English is grammatically fairly simple, having dispensed with much of the (redundant) complexity found in its European brethren (gender, case, almost all inflection). I would argue that that makes it fairly easy for beginners to develop a basic command of it. Its main problems are its unpredictabl…

I've never heard the term "phrasal verb" but one similar case that doesn't use verbs pops up in my head all the time, "down {for,on,with}":

  - "I'm down for  that", I am prepared and willing to do that
  - "I'm down on   that", I don't like that practice
  - "I'm down with that", I do like that practice

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#216

Post by agalunar »

ickoonite wrote: post #36
capableweb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My mother tongue is English. I studied Japanese to degree level so I feel at least moderately qualified to comment on it. English is grammatically fairly simple, having dispensed with much of the (redundant) complexity found in its European brethren (gender, case, almost all inflection). I would argue that that makes it fairly easy for beginners to develop a basic command of it. Its main problems are its unpredictabl…

The English verb system can be devilishly difficult, my favorite example being this "conjugation" of watch:

She must have had been being watched.

= It must be the case that someone watched her for some duration of time prior to the current moment in the story (which is either a hypothetical story or narrative of the past).

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#217

Post by w-m »

daveslash wrote: post #175
w-m wrote: post #37

As it's an article about language, I hope you don't mind me pointing out that there's an additional h in > an introduction to how different language can be has different as It's probably just a simple typo here. But in my head it immediately sounds like a French speaker overcompensating, by adding H's where there aren't any [0], as I have heard this so many times. As a French speaker learning English as a second lang…

Interesting. Thank you for that perspective. You may already know, but "hangry" is english slang for "I'm so hungry, I'm angry! ", or " I'm very grumpy right now because I'm so hungry ". As in: " I don't care where we eat, just pull the damn car over at the next stop - I'm HANGRY! " (see also: "hucken fungry") I could see the h-insertion leading to comical lost-in-translation situations.

Yep, this makes it quite the minefield, when a French person you don't know too well tells you "I'm really really hangry right now". Are they grumpy and hungry and joking, or so completely furious that they started overcompensating? Choose wisely on how to respond :)

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#218

Post by tragomaskhalos »

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…

It's important to distinguish a language from its writing system. The Japanese writing system is a basket case to be sure, but that doesn't say anything about the language itself. My decidedly rudimentary knowledge of the language reveals a rather elegant and logical system, although even here little spikes are already poking through (e.g distinction between wa and ga) that hint of more turbulent waters for the more advanced learner!

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#219

Post by franciscop »

brozaman wrote: post #123
davidmurdoch wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of its exactness. Like with words like course coarse mussel muscle altar alter idle idol very vary presents presence, etc. /s

I know you're being sarcastic, but as a Spanish native speaker I'd say English precisely excels on how well it handles ambiguity and certainty. I also hate with passion that it's not written as it sounds (I think everyone who comes from a language with very regular pronunciation will tell you this) but I don't think this is a real issue on a daily basis. On the other hand Spanish handles other things better. I'd say…

As a Spaniard, I find it funny how in English some times they use both the latin/french and germanic/anglosaxon roots of the same word, but at some point in time they arbitrarily adopted the translation to mean something different and more specific, like: "poison" vs "venom", "tea" vs "ocha/chai", "comic" vs "manga", "teacher" vs "professor", "connoisseur" vs "expert", "memento" vs "souvenir/keepsake", etc.

Then I started to see we are doing the same in Spanish with business/internet to make things sound cooler.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#220

Post by amiga386 »

hikkijp wrote: post #135

It's no different from english or probably most other languages if you think every character is a primitive. Example: word.new("T", "E", "A") would be equivalent to word.new("牛"). Then word.new(word.new("T", "E", "A"), word.new("S", "P", "O", "O", "N")) would be equivalent to word.new(word.new("牛"), word.new("肉")). Next concept the author mixed is working with the verbs, verb.new(word.new("E", "A", "T")).PastTense()…

One of the things I like about Japanese are the particles, but I don't know enough about the language to say if they're completely interchangable in any order. e.g. could you say things in these orders in Japanese? You can't in English, it just doesn't sound right.

ジェームズはダブリンに車で水曜日に行きました。 James-subject Dublin-to car-using Wednesday-on went. James went to Dublin in a car on Wednesday.

ダブリンに水曜日に車でジェームズは行きました。 Dublin-to Wednesday-on car-using James-subject went. To Dublin on Wednesday in a car, James went. In charge of words, Yoda was.

水曜日に車でジェームズはダブリンに行きました。 Wednesday-on car-using James-subject Dublin-to went. On Wednesday, in a car, James went to Dublin.

Similarly, specific to English, there is a definite order in which you have to place adjectives. You can pile up adjectives in front of a noun, but unless they're in the right order, they just don't sound right. "The big red balloon" works, "the red big balloon" is just wrong. As far as I know, Japanese does not have such restrictions.

So something the author has noticed, and as far as I know is correct, is that Japanese is a significantly more composable language than English.

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