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Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms

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Re: Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms

#51

Post by WildParser »

Jonnax wrote: post #49
WildParser wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When learning a bit of Japanese to me it was quite obvious that the script was most likely intentionally left (or made) complicated. By using a normal alphabet that actually fits to the structure of Japanese language it would be just another ordinary language to learn. Using a syllables-script for an ending grammar just doesn't make sense. Using 2 syllable scripts is just strange. It most likely helped the leaders th…

What you've said is nonsensical. A good example of the phrase "a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing" The language is structured around those two syllable letters.

Well, I haven't made that up myself - I got the idea from linguistics books - and from people that lived there for a long time. And those linguists were very clear that the language came first and then syllable script was bolted on.

Re: Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms

#52

Post by Clewza313 »

Jonnax wrote: post #26
Clewza313 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you can actually make a pretty good objective case for Japanese writing being the most complicated writing system on the planet, since no other language that I'm aware of regularly mixes 4 scripts, where basically entirety of Chinese forms just one of those scripts. Except that whereas in Chinese it's rare for a character to have more than one or two readings, in Japanese there are characters with over 70： http…

It could be argued that Chinese has a lot more characters to learn if you're including the Nanori (Readings used in Names) for 生. If you take a language like English, it's still arguable that you'd need 12 years worth of schooling to do an advanced test. Kanji Kentei seems to ask esoteric things at level 2. So it's a test of fluency of not only the Kanji but the language. How would an English learner fare with Shakes…

The Kanji Kentei is not a language test, but specifically a test about kanji, and the fact that you need to be familiar with Chinese poetry etc to ace it showcases how complex the writing system is. About the closest English gets is asking obscure loanwords in spelling bees.

Re: Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms

#53

Post by tkgally »

frivoal wrote: post #47
tkgally wrote: post #30

A bit off topic: I happened to talk with an editor at a large Japanese publishing company a few hours ago and the marketability of audiobooks came up. While audio versions of Japanese fiction and nonfiction books are produced and sold, he said the business has never really taken off and his own company isn’t interested in it anymore. This contrasts with what seems to be a healthy and growing audiobook market in Engli…

I'd speculate differently. Americans commute by car, audiobooks are convenient to read while driving. Japanese commute by train, which is much more suitable to looking at a book (paper or electronic). Also, Manga is massively popular, and that form doesn't covert well (or at all) to audiobook.

> I'd speculate differently. Americans commute by car...

Actually, I mentioned that possibility to the editor, too, as I have often read about Americans listening to audiobooks in the car. His response was that where he is from, in Saitama Prefecture, most people commute by car, too, but while they listen to the radio they don’t listen to audiobooks. That was his impression, anyhow.

You’re right about manga, of course.

Re: Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms

#54

Post by resoluteteeth »

tkgally wrote: post #30

A bit off topic: I happened to talk with an editor at a large Japanese publishing company a few hours ago and the marketability of audiobooks came up. While audio versions of Japanese fiction and nonfiction books are produced and sold, he said the business has never really taken off and his own company isn’t interested in it anymore. This contrasts with what seems to be a healthy and growing audiobook market in Engli…

Audiobooks were a fairly niche market in the US until extremely recently, which is why Audible was able to come in and take over a huge percentage of the market share.

Audible also seems to be doing ok in Japan now so it's probably way to early to attribute the relative popularity of audiobooks to any property of the language.

Re: Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms

#55

Post by kadrian12 »

Katakana, to me, is such a trouble. I really wonder whether I'm the only one who believes that Katakana is a big part of the reason, why it's very hard for native Japanese speakers to learn English.

In a Japan of today, you grow up with a plentitude of words taken from English and written + pronounced in Katakana. So you learn to pronounce "san-do-i-chi" for sandwich, "de-za-i-na" for "designer", "su-ma-ho" for smartphone, "ca-re-n-da" for calendar. And since you use and pronounce them wrongly on a daily basis you reinforce the Japanesified pronunciations. Then, actually pronouncing "calendar" in an English way becomes tricky.

So to me, the alphabets are a great example of a "historically grown" system, that's ripe for a "refactoring".

Re: Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms

#56

Post by glandium »

xelxebar wrote: post #48
johnwalkr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Super interesting topic. Sometimes Japan uses the simplified version, or somewhat in between. Off the top of my head I only can think of 学/學. There’s a handful of kanji created in Japan (called) kokuji, mostly food related. Some of these made it back to China. And there are a few differences based on simple mistakes, for example a Chinese character mistakenly applied to the wrong species of fish.

Just to add to this, simplified forms are mostly confined to Joyo kanji. The old forms do, however, exert their existence even in modern kanji as sub-pieces of (mostly rarer) other kanji---e.g. 専 used to be written 專, which still exists as the right half of 慱. Also, there are lots of cases where the "simple" modern form doesn't really seem all that much simpler when viewing it in a typeface. My ad-hoc hypothesis is t…

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinjitai#Inconsistencies My own goto example of these inconsistencies is 臭 vs. 嗅, aggravated by the fact that Chinese fonts will have the extra stroke in 臭.

Re: Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms

#57

Post by lmm »

innocenat wrote: post #45
lmm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By the way, there’s no requirement that your hanko matches your name and they only need to be registered for large purchases, like a house or for business use. There is a requirement for it to match your name (or registered alias) if you want to register it as a 実印, no?

GP seems to be talking about 銀行印

When they say "only need to be registered for large purchases, like a house", they're talking about a 実印 - a 銀行印 is not "registered" in that sense (it will be on file at the bank, of course).

Re: Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms

#58

Post by felixding »

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…

> 此処 is valid Chinese as well

No. In Chinese it's 此处 (simplified Chinese) or 此處 (traditional Chinese).

AFAIK, 処 is simplified Japanese. The original kanji is 處, which is the same as traditional Chinese.

Re: Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms

#59

Post by whoevercares »

scaladev wrote: post #39
ekianjo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

>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 As someone who knows nothing of the Japanese language beyond the very basics, I found these videos quite entertaining: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E6vHCT0wpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzJqXd-1dEU It looks like many characters are familiar…

Hmm many respondents made fairly good guess to the actual meaning though

Re: Japanese typography: Kilograms of sinograms

#60

Post by glandium »

mcc1ane wrote: post #35
tkgally wrote: post #30

A bit off topic: I happened to talk with an editor at a large Japanese publishing company a few hours ago and the marketability of audiobooks came up. While audio versions of Japanese fiction and nonfiction books are produced and sold, he said the business has never really taken off and his own company isn’t interested in it anymore. This contrasts with what seems to be a healthy and growing audiobook market in Engli…

Japanese-speaking people have trouble understanding each other?

What other sibling comments is true, but it's worth noting that there are cases where spoken Japanese can be ambiguous, and people disambiguate by... mimick-writing in their palm with their finger.
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