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Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms

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Re: Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms

#11

Post by wodenokoto »

Clewza313 wrote: post #8

> some words that are common and were originally written in kanji are now written with hiragana (such as the word "here", ここ instead of 此処). Not really. Japanese as a spoken language predates writing systems, and words like "koko" are yamatokotoba (original Japanese), not loans from other languages. It was first written in kanji (Chinese characters) because that was the only script they had initially, hiragana and ka…

You add in some interesting, additional facts, but you do not in anyway refute what the author wrote.

I think your comment would make more sense if you removed the “not really“ in the beginning. You come off as saying “No, it was not written in kanji at first. It was initially written in kanji!” Which casts a weird, negative shadow on the otherwise interesting facts you add.

Re: Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms

#12

Post by simonebrunozzi »

I am currently memorizing Hiragana (~100% done) and Katagana (~10% done), before venturing into learning some basic Japanese. It's incredibly and unnecessarily complicated, from the perspective of a "westerner" (Italian roots, fluent in English, some Spanish, bits of French). I'm still fascinated by it, and still want to learn some, primarily because I like visiting Japan and I plan to spend several weeks per year there. Kyoto is my favorite city. Last year I was fortunate enough to spend 3 months there, at the beginning of the pandemic (March to June 2020).

It would be great if languages could be "upgraded" to remove the hardest parts, both for native speakers and for foreigners willing to learn.

I remember reading that a famous poet/literate (can't remember who) tried to propose that for the Spanish language, decades ago.

Otherwise, it would be nice to have a universal language that everyone can learn and speak. Obviously, English is now occupying that spot, but I'd bet that English is certainly not the easiest, nor the most complete, language we could use.

Attempts such as Esperanto and others were never carried out with enough skills or resources. I'm wondering if it could be possible to do so today.

Coincidentally, I wrote a novel ~20 years ago, in which the protagonist is a language professor that invents a new universal language, called Galatico, and "open sources" it for the benefit of humanity. I even ventured as far as designing the basic concepts of this artificial language. It was really fun. Without knowing it, I used an alphabet system (base 64, in my case) similar to the one used in the Cistercian numerals [0]. I discovered this just two months ago, when visiting a Cistercian monastery in Italy, and then reading more about these monks.

Truly fascinating, for me.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cistercian_numerals

Re: Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms

#13

Post by euske »

What's amazing about hentai-kana (hentai as "alternative form", not pervert) is that governments and town registrars still allow using them as an official name in their electronic registry. I recently got a copy of my family register, and found out that my grandma's name was officially in hentai kana. Apparently they made special fonts for each unique character, but I don't know how they're encoded on their database. It was kinda awe-inspiring how much they care the details like that. They could replace it with a regular kana but they didn't. Names are serious business!

Re: Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms

#14

Post by gioele »

euske wrote: post #13

What's amazing about hentai-kana (hentai as "alternative form", not pervert) is that governments and town registrars still allow using them as an official name in their electronic registry. I recently got a copy of my family register, and found out that my grandma's name was officially in hentai kana. Apparently they made special fonts for each unique character, but I don't know how they're encoded on their database.…

> I don't know how they're encoded on their database.

All hentaigana are available in Unicode 10. They can be found in the Unicode block 1B000–1B12F (Kana Supplement + Kana Extended-A).

For example, U+1B004 𛀄 HENTAIGANA LETTER A-3

Re: Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms

#15

Post by Jonnax »

euske wrote: post #13

What's amazing about hentai-kana (hentai as "alternative form", not pervert) is that governments and town registrars still allow using them as an official name in their electronic registry. I recently got a copy of my family register, and found out that my grandma's name was officially in hentai kana. Apparently they made special fonts for each unique character, but I don't know how they're encoded on their database.…

Hentaigana have unicode codes as you can see in this table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hentaigana#In_Unicode

So all they need to do is use a font that implements it.

Re: Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms

#16

Post by GolDDranks »

Freak_NL wrote: post #2

The word 'sinogram' sounds a bit contrived, and is not something I see a lot of scholars on this topic use. I personally would recommend against using it. They are mostly just called 'Chinese characters' in English when referring to these logograms, or simply 'kanji' if specifically talking about the Chinese characters in use in Japanese writing. Kanji (and in Korean 'hanja') literally means Han characters after all.…

I did a MA of East Asian Studies at Helsinki University, and our professor ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juha_Janhunen ) used the word sinogram as the standard terminology for the characters. I think this served two functions: 1) to disentangle the concept from a "character used in Chinese language", as sinograms are used at least in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. 2) to create a parallel with words like "logograms" and "phonograms", as sinograms are not purely either, but contain features from both.

Re: Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms

#17

Post by Jonnax »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #12

I am currently memorizing Hiragana (~100% done) and Katagana (~10% done), before venturing into learning some basic Japanese. It's incredibly and unnecessarily complicated, from the perspective of a "westerner" (Italian roots, fluent in English, some Spanish, bits of French). I'm still fascinated by it, and still want to learn some, primarily because I like visiting Japan and I plan to spend several weeks per year th…

Just because a language more complicated to someone with a different culture doesn't mean that it's unnecessarily complicated.

It's a very westerner thing to say "your language is too complicated, you should simplify it for me"

Re: Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms

#18

Post by Freak_NL »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #12

I am currently memorizing Hiragana (~100% done) and Katagana (~10% done), before venturing into learning some basic Japanese. It's incredibly and unnecessarily complicated, from the perspective of a "westerner" (Italian roots, fluent in English, some Spanish, bits of French). I'm still fascinated by it, and still want to learn some, primarily because I like visiting Japan and I plan to spend several weeks per year th…

> Attempts such as Esperanto and others were never carried out with enough skills or resources.

That is a dubious claim. The truth of the matter is that there is no economic benefit in learning Esperanto over learning English as a second language, and (comparatively) very little cultural benefit. Learning English unlocks a vast world of literature, media, and communication in addition to the basic marketable skill its proficiency entails. Esperanto? Not so much.

The only way to force the use of Esperanto or any artificial language is to force children to learn it worldwide. That's something you might expect in North Korea (if they were so inclined), but most people would rightly dismiss it as a mostly pointless exercise.

Re: Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms

#19

Post by Clewza313 »

wodenokoto wrote: post #11
Clewza313 wrote: post #8

> some words that are common and were originally written in kanji are now written with hiragana (such as the word "here", ここ instead of 此処). Not really. Japanese as a spoken language predates writing systems, and words like "koko" are yamatokotoba (original Japanese), not loans from other languages. It was first written in kanji (Chinese characters) because that was the only script they had initially, hiragana and ka…

You add in some interesting, additional facts, but you do not in anyway refute what the author wrote. I think your comment would make more sense if you removed the “not really“ in the beginning. You come off as saying “No, it was not written in kanji at first. It was initially written in kanji!” Which casts a weird, negative shadow on the otherwise interesting facts you add.

It's a pretty subtle point, but the author is saying that "some words were originally written in kanji", while I'm noting that for a word like ここ, that's only true if you include the time when everything was originally written kanji. So the statement is technically correct, but IMHO rather misleading, since (the man'yogana pre-kana period aside) it's generally quite rare for word to make the leap from kanji to kana.

An even more subtle point is that kanji usage is fluid, so it's perfectly correct to write many words as kanji or kana, but with subtle shifts in meaning. For example, いい and 良い are both "good", but the latter is more formal and may even be read differently (yoi vs ii).

Re: Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms

#20

Post by ekianjo »

Clewza313 wrote: post #8

> some words that are common and were originally written in kanji are now written with hiragana (such as the word "here", ここ instead of 此処). Not really. Japanese as a spoken language predates writing systems, and words like "koko" are yamatokotoba (original Japanese), not loans from other languages. It was first written in kanji (Chinese characters) because that was the only script they had initially, hiragana and ka…

> To confuse things even more, 此処 is valid Chinese as well

There's a lot more in common between the writing in Taiwan and Japan since Taiwan kept the "older" kanji while the CCP went thru the cultural revolution and the simplification of the number of strokes in each sign.

Still, there's a bunch of stuff that kind of looks like it would make sense when reading a Chinese word in Japanese, but turns out there's a lot of meanings are very different, either because the meaning evolved over time, or the Japanese simply imported kanji using their original sounds and not caring about their actual meaning.

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