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Japanese explained to programmers

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Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#311

Post by fomine3 »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #162
cableshaft wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well programmers tend to be into video games, and at least for a while all the best video games came out of Japan, so that helped. Between that and anime I really wanted to learn Japanese, and took two semesters of it in college. I even worked for a Japanese game publisher for a while (in their small US office, they originally invited me in to discuss maybe publishing a game I was developing that they spotted at Micr…

I don't think it's necessarily limited to video games. Japan simply has so many strong otaku (original meaning) subcultures to nerd on, anime/manga/game being the obvious ones (to be more accurate, manga in Japan isn't really a "sub"-culture, but the otaku portion of it is big enough on its own). The only things I can think of that are comparable in the Western world are Star Wars or Sci-Fi in general, and Superhero…

Disney is a big one

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#312

Post by justusw »

Laaas wrote: post #50
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 not clear to me whether it's one of the _least_ complex languages (there are various warts I'd get rid of if I were in control), but it's certainly not more complex than English. The "many pronunciations for one kanji" thing isn't a problem in practice, because 1) most kanji have _1_ on'yomi (Chinese) and _1_ kun'yomi (native) pronunciation, with it being obvious which one to choose from context, especially beca…

I was working on an import/data conversion task for a Japanese accounting software. I always assumed importing was じゅにゅう, but it is actually うけいれ (受入). Much to my amusement I found out I have been saying breastfeeding (授乳) instead of importing. Theoretically both are readings for the same Kanji, but by convention, a lot of compound verbs are read using kun-yomi instead. Anyway, I hope my tax lawyer still was able to understand what I was trying to communicate? Prepare for people being too polite to point out mistakes.

Also sometimes 受入 is written 受け入れ instead! And 支払い can be 支払. It is really confusing.

Knowing all these nuances is difficult if you are looking to just use simple rules here and there.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#313

Post by Tangurena2 »

Tor3 wrote: post #145
ickoonite wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what is a language without its written form? I mean, fine, if we are going to contrive a comparison where we are only comparing spoken forms, well…English is still going to come out on top, because - exactly as you explained in your edit - its grammar is simple enough that almost anyone can have a go at it. Stick some words together and you’re probably 80% of the way there. That’s not going to be true of any infl…

I know a person who is fully fluent (I should write "proficient") in Japanese, he has lived in Japan for decades. Built a successful career. But he can't write Japanese. He doesn't read Kanji. Sounds almost incomprehensible to me, because I learn languages by reading (which is where Japanese has given me some trouble). As for English.. "I is to town goes". Mess it up in every possible way and the meaning is still the…

As for learning a language, there are 4 "skills" involved: speaking, listening, reading and writing. We group them all into one clump - which I think is a mistake. It is common to have different proficiency levels in each "skill". I've also forgotten a number of languages over the decades and I find that I lose reading/writing skill the fastest with languages that use other than Roman letters (such as Farsi, Arabic & Japanese). I can speak and read French, but if it is spoken, I'm lost.

Written Japanese is hard even for native speakers. Children are usually in high school before they've learned enough Kanji to be able to read a daily newspaper. And some Kanji are so rarely used that newspapers have to put furigana (the little "cheat sheet" or subtitles) alongside the ones that even adults are going to have trouble with.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#314

Post by ickoonite »

justusw wrote: post #312
Laaas wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear to me whether it's one of the _least_ complex languages (there are various warts I'd get rid of if I were in control), but it's certainly not more complex than English. The "many pronunciations for one kanji" thing isn't a problem in practice, because 1) most kanji have _1_ on'yomi (Chinese) and _1_ kun'yomi (native) pronunciation, with it being obvious which one to choose from context, especially beca…

I was working on an import/data conversion task for a Japanese accounting software. I always assumed importing was じゅにゅう, but it is actually うけいれ (受入). Much to my amusement I found out I have been saying breastfeeding (授乳) instead of importing. Theoretically both are readings for the same Kanji, but by convention, a lot of compound verbs are read using kun-yomi instead. Anyway, I hope my tax lawyer still was able to…

読み込む is probably more common for “import” (and 書き出す for “export”). But differences abound. Windows uses 印刷 for print (or did last time I checked); the Mac has long used プリント。And for connoisseurs of truly subtle differences, ウィンドウ on Windows contrasts with ウインドウ on the Mac.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#315

Post by hinkley »

ickoonite wrote: post #290
IIAOPSW wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mao tried to simplify Chinese and frankly Mao didn't go far enough.

They actually tried to do a second round in the 1970s. It was felt that they had gone too far so it was abandoned, but not before some people had changed their surnames to use the new simplifications (e.g. 傅 became 付). Some never changed back.

I love how ` basically becomes 'yadda yadda yadda' for the entire middle of 傅

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#316

Post by [deleted] »

ezconnect wrote: post #133
bamboozled wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the language is so difficult that it actually holds the society back. Things are just way harder than they need to be in a lot of instances.

It didn't hold back their society, what was held back was the competition because Japanese is hard and the locals have all the business and flourished. That's my view on why they were successful compared to other Asian nations who adapted English early on their history.

[deleted]

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#317

Post by bamboozled »

ezconnect wrote: post #133
bamboozled wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the language is so difficult that it actually holds the society back. Things are just way harder than they need to be in a lot of instances.

It didn't hold back their society, what was held back was the competition because Japanese is hard and the locals have all the business and flourished. That's my view on why they were successful compared to other Asian nations who adapted English early on their history.

Not sure if this argument holds water in 2023, "tech" for example is well behind in Japan.

I guess the world is a more connected place now.

I love the language though so I'm personally happy if it sticks around.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#318

Post by Tangurena2 »

outworlder wrote: post #237
singlow wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that this is a common misconception by many language learners, and it is not their fault. Usually when we learn about a language in a non-organic setting, such as a classroom, we learn mostly about the "rules". But the rules are usually just generalizations that cover a large portion of usage, while the irregularities are often learned later or are segregated as "special" cases even though they are often the m…

That is what turned my off grammar for me from a very young age. As a child I decided to ignore all rules and just read books. The end result is that I can write whole essays flawlessly in my native tongue with no mistakes – but I can't tell you why. I'll just "know" that a comma needs to be added, for example.

Some teachers can do that to any subject, no matter how interesting.

> The rule is that multiple adjectives are always ranked accordingly: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose. Unlike many laws of grammar or syntax, this one is virtually inviolable, even in informal speech. [0]

There is a proper order for adjectives in English that native speakers follow, but cannot explain.

> "It's an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out. And as size comes before colour, green great dragons can't exist." [1]

0 - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/senten...

1 - https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-37285796

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#319

Post by blep_ »

kazinator wrote: post #212
bernawil wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

English has that too ("one should eat one's vegetables") but it has similar problems to "thou" in that nobody uses it in everyday speech.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#320

Post by ksenzee »

ickoonite wrote: post #309
culi wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to distinguish a language from it's most popular orthography. English is not the Latin Alphabet and Japanese is not Kanji. I've created my own orthography before. It kinda looks like the Arabic script superficially and it's made to be featural and phonemic. People have often seen my writing in it and asked "What languages is that" to which I always annoyingly reply "English". The thing is though, human…

> but the level of information you can encode with a syllabary is much higher [citation needed] It’s not clear how you can encode any more information with hiragana/katakana - the Japanese syllabaries - than you can with an alphabet. Indeed, it’s fairly clear the reverse is true - you can only really encode sounds for which the syllabary has symbols; conversely, as English demonstrates, you can encode a vast array of…

I think they meant the encoding is more efficient, so you can encode more information with fewer characters.
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