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Japanese explained to programmers

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Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#281

Post by pezezin »

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 think it's related to there being fewer ways to "fuck up". In English, it's easy to mix up the letters, transpose them, etc.. With Chinese characters/kanjix, _you can't transpose strokes_ digitally. There are people who make mistakes when writing by hand, but even that is much less when writing kana, the reason being that while in English, "relatiounally" and "relationally" might be similarly, transposing whole kana changes the pronunciation such that it's entirely distinct. Transposing strokes within a kana is of course still possible.

They don't transpose the strokes, they just forget how to write the character entirely, even if they can read it perfectly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_amnesia

I live in Japan and I have seen it happen many times, suddenly the person needs to stop and check the character in their phone or a dictionary. I have never seen it happens with an alphabet-based language. Sure, you might not be 100% sure about the spelling, but you can always approximate it and write something.

Every single Japanese person who I know has told me how much a pain in the ass their language is to read and write, and how they wish it was simpler, but shoganai.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#282

Post by vertexmachina »

LZ_Khan wrote: post #245
presentation wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve learned both and found Chinese harder just because if you lose context then it’s hard to understand anything else being spoken. Japanese has more semantic repetition in the sentence structures. Both are equally logical grammatically though, and Chinese does have a much easier time learning character pronunciations.

Chinese has easier character pronunciations? I find it hard to believe that. The tones are what makes Chinese the hardest language to learn. Most people who learn Chinese will never be able to sound Chinese. To Chinese people they will look like some fool who has learning deficits (I know this is not true, but the lack of empathy in mono-cultural nations is quite high). I don't think there's any language in the top 2…

In my experience, Chinese people are thrilled when non-Chinese people speak their language (even poorly), probably because it's pretty rare.

But yes, the tones are the hard part. The grammar is straight forward and similar to English, and characters are (almost always) pronounced only one way.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#283

Post by 0xf00ff00f »

philsnow wrote: post #207
ickoonite wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there’s no limit on how many readings a kanji can get, people can randomly add new readings and popularize them. Precisely! It is insane. Song lyrics are a case in point. It is the height of erudition to contrive a novel way to write some verb or other. Furigana are essential for karaoke.

> Song lyrics are a case in point. It is the height of erudition to contrive a novel way to write some verb or other. This is intensely interesting -- do I understand this correctly, that what happens is a songwriter uses a verb (or I guess any word) and writes it down as a different set of kanji(+kana) than how it's usually written, and the new form is confusing at first to a reader of the lyrics, and the new form e…

I've seen そら (sky) written as 宇宙 in song lyrics a few times.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#284

Post by knodi123 »

ickoonite wrote: post #148
atsuzaki wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned both English and Japanese as third/fourth languages and English grammar does _not_ make sense compared to Asian languages that has comparatively very logical forms, usually with minimal modifiers that doesn't change the entire sentence structure. I frankly gave up with English grammar and just did whatever feels right.

> I frankly gave up with English grammar and just did whatever feels right. This is the correct approach.

That's how native-speaker kids learn grammar. First learn to speak the language. Then many years later, learn how to say _why_ what you're doing is the right way.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#285

Post by IIAOPSW »

pezezin wrote: post #281
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 think it's related to there being fewer ways to "fuck up". In English, it's easy to mix up the letters, transpose them, etc.. With Chinese characters/kanjix, _you can't transpose strokes_ digitally. There are people who make mistakes when writing by hand, but even that is much less when writing kana, the reason being that while in English, "relatiounally" and "relationally" might be similarly, transposing whole k…

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

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#286

Post by ickoonite »

barking_biscuit wrote: post #267
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…

>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 because when it's kun'yomi, the kanji are suffixed with hiragana to denote its correct pronunciation. There are however problematic kanji, such as the one you note, because there are seve…

Precisely.

The feeling I am getting from this discussion is there are quite a few people who have dabbled in the spoken language without having to grapple with its intractable writing system but consider themselves experts regardless. Anyone who looks at English and Japanese and finds them to be of equivalent complexity probably isn’t qualified to comment on either.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#287

Post by Laaas »

barking_biscuit wrote: post #267
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…

>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 because when it's kun'yomi, the kanji are suffixed with hiragana to denote its correct pronunciation. There are however problematic kanji, such as the one you note, because there are seve…

For such cases I find that the pronunciation _doesn't matter_. The meaning still comes across.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#288

Post by [deleted] »

ickoonite wrote: post #272
MrOwnPut wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP said "unpredictable" spelling, not complex. And I said "Old English". I was saying it's unpredictable if you include Old English spelling and words (which you don't in Simplified English). The remaining unpredictable words are imported foreign words, usually French.

There is no one particular subset of English you can exclude to simplify its spelling. I don’t really know what you classify as Old English, but whatever Simplified English is, it is highly unlikely it excludes Old English as traditionally defined, as the majority of the most commonly used words - italicised here - have such heritage. The spelling of such words is probably not the most troubling part of English ortho…

[deleted]

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#289

Post by johnwalkr »

anthk wrote: post #279
johnwalkr wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did my PhD in Japan, in a lab focusing on robotics for lunar exploration, among other things. Every semester there was a revolving door of interns and exchange students from France[1], and a good percentage of them came not for the very interesting subject matter, but for their interest in manga and anime. It was always cringy when they introduced themselves as an anime cosplay enthusiast with the mistaken impressi…

Honestly, the reverse it's a bit true... for Japanese girls/women. They love Disney.

Well, I didn't elaborate the extent of some of these people but the equivalent would be meeting multiple, 24 year old Japanese women attending MIT for a summer program that has Disney cosplayer as their identity and skip class to walk around Boston taking selfies with Minnie Mouse hats on.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#290

Post by ickoonite »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #285
pezezin wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's related to there being fewer ways to "fuck up". In English, it's easy to mix up the letters, transpose them, etc.. With Chinese characters/kanjix, _you can't transpose strokes_ digitally. There are people who make mistakes when writing by hand, but even that is much less when writing kana, the reason being that while in English, "relatiounally" and "relationally" might be similarly, transposing whole k…

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.
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