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I used to know how to write in Japanese

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Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#161

Post by TheDong »

klausa wrote: post #77
bloak wrote: post #58

If you're doing an exam in China or Japan, do you write on paper, or use a computer?

Not the question you asked; but something that actually surprised me, as someone who has taken multiple language tests in the EU: The (semi-official) Japanese language tests do not test language production in _any_ way, even on the highest levels. You don't need to speak a single word, nor write a single character to pass the exam, it's all single-choice answers. AFAICT, the equivalent exams for Chinese and Koreans d…

> The (semi-official) Japanese language tests do not test language production in _any_ way, even on the highest levels.

This is simply not true. The Kanji Kentei is probably the most popular Japanese language test Japanese people might take outside of school, and it tests writing heavily.

If you're talking about the JLPT, that's a test meant only for non-native speakers.

> all single-choice answers.

Not even multiple choices? Maybe they should reconsider that one.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#162

Post by dmoy »

bloak wrote: post #116
dmoy wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happens in Chinese too Grocery lists will be a mish mash of characters and pinyin https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/jiaozi.gif 鸡, get halfway through writing 蛋, forget how to do it without a computerized pinyin input, give up, scribble it out and write dan

Thanks for that example. Would a Chinese person ever write the tone in pinyin when writing something for themselves?

Not when doing fragments in obvious context like that. For one, tone doesn't disambiguate anyways. There's 10+ common characters with pinyin 'dan', and only 4 (5) tones in Mandarin.

But also when the context is super obvious there, there's no need.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#163

Post by jaylaal »

joshdavham wrote: post #160

This article actually hits on a pet peeve of mine where I feel people sorta “mystify” kanji/hanzi unnecessarily. The truth is that there’s actually nothing particularly weird about being able to read some kanji but not be able to write them… You actually get close to my point here: > Admittedly, I've never heard of someone forgetting how to write a letter from the Latin alphabet. Yes! But have you ever heard of someo…

Nice comparison. When I was living in China, I'd encounter someone who forgot how to write the characters for a word on a weekly basis. I think the difference is that with Latin alphabets you can still misspell something, and having gotten it down on paper, still rely on phonetics to convey your meaning.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#164

Post by Cyan488 »

Macha wrote: post #113
thaumasiotes wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In an ideal world maybe learners could focus exclusively on listening and speaking first, then move on to kanji later. But writing is a very useful tool in learning, and having access to that tool can help speed things up. There is no connection between these two sentences. You can learn to read and write in Japanese without ever learning a single kanji, and that's what everybody does do. Kana serve the purpose fla…

With 0 kanji, it's such a small subset that it's hard to call that a finished job of learning to read or write as you'll be limited to material like kids books or NHK news easy.

Yes, I ignored Kanji completely while learning Japanese. I only learned words in hiragana and katakana from my SRS decks. I regret it because it locked me out of a lot of comprehensible input I could have used to actually progress in ways apart from learning the sounds of lots of words (even the sounds I learned were often wrong because I never heard anyone speak the words I was learning).

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#165

Post by vunderba »

joshdavham wrote: post #160

This article actually hits on a pet peeve of mine where I feel people sorta “mystify” kanji/hanzi unnecessarily. The truth is that there’s actually nothing particularly weird about being able to read some kanji but not be able to write them… You actually get close to my point here: > Admittedly, I've never heard of someone forgetting how to write a letter from the Latin alphabet. Yes! But have you ever heard of someo…

I don't think anyone is "mysticizing" the language. It's just that logographic languages in general present a uniquely interesting problem whereby the auditory component is largely divorced from the written component.

IMHO spelling is an inapt analogy. Every single word I can communicate orally, I can write. Sure I might mess up "I before E" or some other minor issue, but I'm BUILDING the word from first principles, e.g., syllable phonemes. That's why kids are taught to "sound it out" at a young age.

The closest equivalent you have in logographs might be radicals.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#166

Post by throwup238 »

joshdavham wrote: post #160

This article actually hits on a pet peeve of mine where I feel people sorta “mystify” kanji/hanzi unnecessarily. The truth is that there’s actually nothing particularly weird about being able to read some kanji but not be able to write them… You actually get close to my point here: > Admittedly, I've never heard of someone forgetting how to write a letter from the Latin alphabet. Yes! But have you ever heard of someo…

> Admittedly, I've never heard of someone forgetting how to write a letter from the Latin alphabet.

I’ve actually done this all the time as a bilingual speaker with my language in Cyrillic. It doesn’t happen often but once in a while I’ll freeze and be unable to remember which glyph makes which sound when switching alphabets/languages.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#167

Post by ktosobcy »

joshdavham wrote: post #160

This article actually hits on a pet peeve of mine where I feel people sorta “mystify” kanji/hanzi unnecessarily. The truth is that there’s actually nothing particularly weird about being able to read some kanji but not be able to write them… You actually get close to my point here: > Admittedly, I've never heard of someone forgetting how to write a letter from the Latin alphabet. Yes! But have you ever heard of someo…

>> Admittedly, I've never heard of someone forgetting how to write a letter from the Latin alphabet.

> Yes! But have you ever heard of someone forgetting how to spell certain words in a language that uses the Latin alphabet (e.g., English)?

Erm... great that you gave English as an example but I'd argue this mostly applies to English. I remember wondering why "spelling bee" was a thing when watching shows from the USA because that wouldn't make any sense in Polish. Same with Spanish. And a lot of others. There are some minor things to remember and you can do errors but in 99,(9)% of the cases it's "you write what you hear".

It could have been a case for English as well but the reform efforts were killed so here we are with all it's quirkyness :)

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#168

Post by bananalychee »

nojs wrote: post #118
nneonneo wrote: post #35

This is very common in Chinese now. The older generation, many of whom didn’t learn pinyin, just use voice input to send messages; the younger generations just use pinyin input and similarly can’t handwrite beyond the simplest characters. The phenomenon of forgetting how to write is called 提笔忘字 (tíbǐwàngzì - to pick up the pen and forget the character). It was previously covered here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.c…

To people who think this is surprising, it’s not that different to forgetting how to spell rare English words

Not really. Even in English there are only a few possible ways to spell out a given sound. With Chinese characters that mostly goes out the window, making speaking and writing more or less orthogonal skills. Not entirely since there are classes of characters that are related by sound, but to a much greater extent than alphabetic languages. Personally if I forget a spelling in English or a related language I realize that my approximation looks wrong and can correct it by elimination, whereas with Chinese characters it's common for people to simply not have a clue how to even write the first stroke of a word they've heard and read before.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#169

Post by diob »

joshdavham wrote: post #160

This article actually hits on a pet peeve of mine where I feel people sorta “mystify” kanji/hanzi unnecessarily. The truth is that there’s actually nothing particularly weird about being able to read some kanji but not be able to write them… You actually get close to my point here: > Admittedly, I've never heard of someone forgetting how to write a letter from the Latin alphabet. Yes! But have you ever heard of someo…

Yes! I've studied Japanese for years and read numerous novels in it each year, yet I couldn't physically write to save my life.

But there's nothing crazy about that, like you said it's similar to spelling (not entirely, as I can spell things fine if I have a phonetic keyboard that "writes" for me).

Writing vs reading to me, is more about the type of memory.

Recognition vs recall.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#170

Post by codedokode »

bapak wrote: post #30

A system fails when its natives don't know how to use it. So time to sunset the system, surely? I don't know why so many countries are so obstinately hanging onto something so difficult. Do it like Korea if you don't want to go the Vietnamese way.

That reads as a foreigner suggesting to abandon many thousands years long history and culture just because the characters are too difficult for him.

It doesn't even make sense because today we have computers and ML. If you want to write something, you just type the spelling, and the program automatically converts it into proper characters. And if you don't understand the character, AI can translate it for you. I am sure this can be integrated into electronic glasses.

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