This article is cool, I love the way is actually encourages to learn something by starting with something simple that you can grasp in seconds.
I was like (｡◕口◕｡)!!!
Japanese writing system basics
281–290 of 347 posts
Re: Japanese writing system basics
#282Another interesting aspect of traditional Chinese characters is that complex words are expressed by combining simpler symbols. For example, the Chinese word for computer is 電腦. The first character represents "electricity", and the second character represents "brain". Which is really what a computer is, an electric brain. Similarly, a computer programmer is 程序員, where the three symbols are "rule", "order", and "person…
> Another interesting aspect of traditional Chinese characters is that complex words are expressed by combining simpler symbols. For example, the Chinese word for computer is 電腦. The first character represents "electricity", and the second character represents "brain". Which is really what a computer is, an electric brain. That's nice, but I think most languages do this. It's not particular to Chinese. The word "comp…
"To pile together?"
Re: Japanese writing system basics
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
Logographic systems have some major disadvantages: • It's possible to know how to say a word, but have no clue how to write it. This phenomenon is called character amnesia, and it affects most native speakers.[1] Phonetic languages allow you to write out a misspelled word, which readers can understand (or autocorrect can fix). • Likewise, it's possible to know what a symbol means, but have no idea how to pronounce it…
>Phonetic languages allow you to write out a misspelled word, which readers can understand (or autocorrect can fix). You can certainly write things out in kana. When I was more serious about studying Japanese, I knew less than 1000 kanji, but had a vocabulary several times that size, and would at times write out the word I meant in hiragana. And if we're counting autocorrect, your IME is going to take that hiragana a…
You cannot write things out in Kana in Chinese. As such, GP's point against logographic writing systems stands, notwithstanding mixed writing systems such as Japanese.
Even without autocorrect, you can write a word in English such that most people would understand. Of course, in a logographic system you'd just write a homophone (which is what people actually do, write a simpler word pronounced the same).
As for looking up, it is in principle easier though. You only need to learn the order of about 26 things, not about 200, and can then run iterative binary search over it, and don't have to switch to stroke count. It is possible, of course.
Re: Japanese writing system basics
#284Can I believe this? Does Japanese really mix characters that mean things with characters that mean sounds?
Re: Japanese writing system basics
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same in Thai. They ask กินข้าวหรือยัง ("Have you eaten yet?", or literally "Have you eaten rice yet?") as a greeting.
That reminds me that sometimes in my family we'll jokingly say jeet? It comew from the comedian Jeff Foxworthy who said it's redneck for "Did you eat? " I'm in Canada and not redneck I wonder if jeet is actually used in the US.
> I wonder if jeet is actually used in the US
Not really. Foxworthy's joke isn't that that is actually a word, which it's not; it's that that is how the phrase "Did you eat?" comes out sounding in the accent of his home, which is a couple states east of mine. (Also apparently in the accent of New Jersey, which suggests to me that this particular trait may be more coastal than specifically Southern.)
Re: Japanese writing system basics
#286Can I believe this? Does Japanese really mix characters that mean things with characters that mean sounds?
It does. Kanji represent meaning; hiragana and katakana both represent punctuation.
Re: Japanese writing system basics
#287Sometimes I wonder if all these people that criticize or that think that a Latin alphabet can be adapted seamlessly to all languages have tried to study past a beginner level any logographic language.
We should all speak Hawaiian.
Re: Japanese writing system basics
#288Love the live video analytics! Such a simple yet effective hack.
Re: Japanese writing system basics
#289Another interesting side-effect that the compactness of Chinese symbols (other variations: Hanja in Korean, Kanji in Japanese and so forth) allowed was a higher chance of survival against natural disasters like wild fires or crimes like thefts or vandalism. It was/is far easier to ensure redundancy of scripts and books since the costs of reprinting/copying was far lower compared to other forms of phonetic systems. Th…
A counterpoint: When a message is written with an alphabet, it's not as compact, but its meaning can be guessed at even if significant portions of the message are missing (known as lacunae). See, e.g., the TV game show Wheel of Fortune ; another example is the Dead Sea Scrolls and other ancient manuscripts that have deteriorated over time.
That may be true. And perhaps the same argument could be made for Chinese characters?
Could you elaborate on why the alphabetic system is intrinsically more efficient than Chinese characters in terms of recovering messages from partial loss of texts?
Re: Japanese writing system basics
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
> you only need to learn around 3000 symbols This is not a good result. Learning 3000 characters could take years, and even then there would still be some you don't know. To read an English newspaper you only need to learn 26 symbols. Yes you need to learn the words, but you also have to do that for Chinese which is separate from learning the symbols for each word. It's a hugely inefficient way to write. Furthermore,…
>It's a hugely inefficient way to write. Agreed. Remindeds me of an anecdote from David Moser: "I was once at a luncheon with three Ph.D. students in the Chinese Department at Peking University, all native Chinese (one from Hong Kong). I happened to have a cold that day, and was trying to write a brief note to a friend canceling an appointment that day. I found that I couldn't remember how to write the character 嚔, a…
> my favorite has always been 火雞 (fire chicken) for turkey.
Turkeys are not native to Asia so it had to be added late to the language, which is why it doesn't make much sense.
The problem with Chinese is that when you have a new thing like turkeys you have to either create a new character, which then people have to memorize forever, or you have to string together sort-of related ideas into a compound word that has only some tangential relation to its parts. When you have thousands of words that are only somewhat related to their parts, the parts lose their meaning and become not much more than a really large and complicated alphabet.
Chinese was over-engineered to work great for maybe a few thousand words, but the world keeps getting bigger and bigger and every new thing makes the Chinese language worse.