Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I used to know how to write in Japanese

aethermug.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 277 posts

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#41

Post by sixothree »

apt-apt-apt-apt wrote: post #18
sixothree wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s real. I didn’t know it was a thing until a few years ago then suddenly everything made sense. I’m glad people are talking about it.

What is aphantasia, specifically? I don't consider myself to have aphantasia. If I close my eyes and try to 'see' with my eyes the letter 'm' or an apple, all I see is the back of my eyelids– pitch black. If I then try to 'see' with my mind the letter 'm', I can imagine the shape and drawing the shape, but it never appears in a physically visual manner. I can trace its lines with my eyeballs, but try as I may to hall…

How are you with reading fiction? Easy or a struggle?

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#42

Post by pezezin »

ti42o34j234234 wrote: post #5

This is probably why Japan still adamantly emphasizes writing. Written resumes/ fax machines ... remain the norm, and while this may seem anachronistic for the rest of the world (pretty much all of which uses either (semi-) phonetic scripts derived from Aramaic or from Brahmi), it makes sense after you come across the Chinese characters.

No, it's because Japan is a deeply conservative country, really adverse to change, because change means taking risks. If you ever had to deal with Japanese you would know, layers upon layers of convoluted procedures for no real reason.

But hey, at least now I can get the "my number card" to get my hanko certificate from the convenience store. Maybe in 30 years I will be able to use the card directly to prove my ID without needing the stupid hanko!

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#43

Post by vunderba »

I spent years in Taiwan studying traditional Chinese and even at the height of my proficiency there were plenty of rarer logographs that I'd frequently stumble over - only able to draw "blurry approximations" of them depending on my familiarity.

Coming from a phonetic language with only 26 letters, it was such a surreal feeling being able to effortlessly read a character but be unable to reproduce it.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#44

Post by apt-apt-apt-apt »

sixothree wrote: post #41
apt-apt-apt-apt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is aphantasia, specifically? I don't consider myself to have aphantasia. If I close my eyes and try to 'see' with my eyes the letter 'm' or an apple, all I see is the back of my eyelids– pitch black. If I then try to 'see' with my mind the letter 'm', I can imagine the shape and drawing the shape, but it never appears in a physically visual manner. I can trace its lines with my eyeballs, but try as I may to hall…

How are you with reading fiction? Easy or a struggle?

It's easy, the experience isn't very visual though. More about the plot and emotions I'd say.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#45

Post by lyall »

timr wrote: post #19
lyall wrote: post #11

When learning Japanese, I purposely chose to _not_ learn how to write any of it by hand. As the author notes, writing (by hand) is in fact a separate skill from reading. So I decided I would not invest my limited time, motivation, or brain space to writing. Overall it's been a successful approach, and I recommend it to new learners unless they have a particular interest in being able to write by hand or they feel str…

I went to an old-school language school where I was forced to take tests in handwritten Japanese. I probably still have some of that in my brain, but like you, I almost completely abandoned it as soon as I didn't have to take language school tests anymore. It's occasionally useful to write out a character, but on the whole, it's completely unnecessary now that we have computers with hiragana keyboards. As a partial a…

Yeah I agree. I way over-indexed on learning kanji (via WaniKani) at the beginning of my Japanese learning journey. I got about halfway through before realizing it was silly that I could read 健忘症 but didn't know many very basic hiragana-only words. It wasn't timed wasted but it probably wasn't the most efficient approach.

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.

Like most things in life, a balanced approach is probably the right one. But you have to know what your goal is. Our brains are lazy, they only get better at what we make them get better at. If your goal is to just read kanji, practice reading kanji. If your goal is to understand and speak the language, practice listening to and speaking the language. But if you want to have a balanced language ability, you'll need to practice it all.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#46

Post by vunderba »

From the article:

> On the surface, this atypical trait seems to explain quite well why I can draw a blank when asked to write the kanji for "plant" (植) from memory. I don't see the character in my mind, so it makes sense that I can't reproduce it on paper.

While the author's aphantasia may have posed some recall issues - it wouldn't explain why they had ever been able to reproduce 植. Kanji has the concept of radicals AND stroke order. One could make the case that perhaps the author's motor cortex is simply storing the equivalent of LOGO programming language instructions for reproducing the logograph.

Take away your mind's ability to find and chunk (木, 十, 具) by showing them "radical"-less characters and I'm sure it would be even more difficult.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#47

Post by alisonatwork »

lyall wrote: post #11

When learning Japanese, I purposely chose to _not_ learn how to write any of it by hand. As the author notes, writing (by hand) is in fact a separate skill from reading. So I decided I would not invest my limited time, motivation, or brain space to writing. Overall it's been a successful approach, and I recommend it to new learners unless they have a particular interest in being able to write by hand or they feel str…

Yeah I made the same decision learning Chinese. It's just not worth the extra time and effort relative to the utility.

Occasionally I still have to sign my name, so I specifically picked a name that a) was written the same in both simplified and traditional and b) had a low number of strokes. Like you, the only time this has bitten me is in hospitals and banks where occasionally they ask you to do stuff like write out your address. I sometimes exercise my dumb foreigner privilege and ask the clerk to help, but since addresses have a formal romanization method it's often fine to write that, and I've seen enough locals struggle I don't feel too bad about it.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#48

Post by simianparrot »

lyall wrote: post #11

When learning Japanese, I purposely chose to _not_ learn how to write any of it by hand. As the author notes, writing (by hand) is in fact a separate skill from reading. So I decided I would not invest my limited time, motivation, or brain space to writing. Overall it's been a successful approach, and I recommend it to new learners unless they have a particular interest in being able to write by hand or they feel str…

I am doing both because while learning to write the symbol for a sound/meaning and identifying the symbol’s sound/meaning are separate skills, they enhance the fluidity of _thinking_ in Japanese significantly for me. It has a synergistic effect and to me seems to improve the brain’s understanding and efficiency in compressing the knowledge.

But my goal is not just to read and understand but to talk conversationally. While Japanese is very different from my other languages, I’m already multilingual (Norwegian, English, Dutch and German) and this approach has always worked best for me.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#49

Post by HeatrayEnjoyer »

vehemenz wrote: post #9

I enjoyed this read, but I am noticing that people who claim to have aphantasia seem to write about themselves and their experiences an awful lot. I doubt the phenomenon is real. Some people doubt that sun-sneezing is real, so I can entertain the possibility of being wrong. But sun-sneezing is trivial to demonstrate to doubters, and it doesn’t confer any “I’m special points.” No one would pretend to have it, unlike a…

Given the amount of literature on the matter, what durable evidence is there that it actually doesn't exist?

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#50

Post by hintymad »

What drove me crazy when I started to learn Japanese was that a Kanji characters can have so many different pronunciations. The most egregious example is 煙草, whose pronunciation is the really just tabacco(tabako, or タバコ). I knew the etymologies and the historical context on why Japanese evolved like that, but it's nonetheless hard for me to remember all the pronunciations, at least initially.

Also, I find that knowing Kanji is essential in appreciating part of Japanese culture. Take their addresses, for example: Kinukawa is really meaningless, but 鬼怒川 is such a amazing name. Similarly, Akihabara means little if all we know is the pronunciation, yet its Kanji 秋叶原 is such a beautiful and poetic name that invokes complex emotions.

Post reply on HN