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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

#81

Post by numpad0 »

aikinai wrote: post #78
BrenBarn wrote: post #71

I mean, this is not a politically correct statement, but I think one line of reasoning from this is to say that Chinese characters (which is what kanji are) are not a great way to write down language for practical purposes. A friend of mine in grad school irreverently referred to the Chinese writing system as "a really huge, really inefficient syllabary", and I think there's some truth to that. The characters no doub…

It also affects the learning curve. English-speaking children can read far more advanced books earlier than equivalently educated Japanese. They probably don't outweigh the disadvantages, but there are some small benefits. Once fluent, I think I remember Japanese to be slightly faster to read because of the more unique shapes. And you can make more flexible and elegant graphic text designs and tables (like in Excel)…

Is that so? Deducing definition of an unknown kanji word isn't that difficult. I never had issues with "advanced kanji" as far back as I can recall.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#82

Post by jansan »

BrenBarn wrote: post #71

I mean, this is not a politically correct statement, but I think one line of reasoning from this is to say that Chinese characters (which is what kanji are) are not a great way to write down language for practical purposes. A friend of mine in grad school irreverently referred to the Chinese writing system as "a really huge, really inefficient syllabary", and I think there's some truth to that. The characters no doub…

Overall you are probably correct, but there are certain benefits from the Chinese character system.

Long time ago I studied Japanese in Japan. On the way back to my home country I was sitting next to a bunch of Chinese people on the plane who did not speak any English or Japanese, but we were able to have a small conversation using Kanji/Chinese characters, because the characters' meanings are usually the same, although the languages are quite different. If the people would have been Greek and could not speak any English, no conversation would have been possible at all.

Another thing to mention is the radical system. Many Chinese characters consist of two or more characters, of which one is the "radical". This often helps you understand the broad meaning of the character in case you do not know it. For example, the Japanese character for fish is "魚". If you know that character and see another unknown character that used "fish" as a radical (for example "鮭"), you know that the character probably describes some kind of fish (in this case salmon). So it is not simply a huge list of "syllables".

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#84

Post by numpad0 »

astrobe_ wrote: post #66
timr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is substantially harder and slower to read a stream of hiragana than to read a stream of hiragana and kanji. I don't know if you know anything about the language, but it's not because of homophones (though that is certainly improved) -- it's chunking. Japanese written language has the property that when you see kanji followed by one of a very small number of hiragana patterns, you know you're seeing a verb. Stemmi…

Yet, that's exactly what you do when you read English - and many of us even read it as a foreign language with different roots and different grammar etc. So I don't understand how it would be more tedious in hiragana; it looks like a "just get used to it" thing to me.

There's an advocate group for all-kana Japanese that existed since 1920, just decade or two after pseudo-Chinese styles was deprecated and kana-kanji mixed as-spoken text became the standard, before even kana switched from katakana to hiragana, and they don't even use all-kana text on its official propaganda page anymore[0], so there's that.

0: https://www.kanamozi.org/hikari939-0501.html

1: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%AB%E3%83%8A%E3%83%A2%E3...

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#85

Post by vintermann »

tdeck wrote: post #6

A similar thing happens with all kinds of iconography, from flags to logos. People can easily recognize many logos, but when asked to draw them they often can't come very close. https://magazine.adler.co.uk/promotional-idea/we-asked-100-p...

Not just logos, but also shapes of everyday objects. Bikes, famously.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#86

Post by thaumasiotes »

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…

> It's only rarely that I have to write anything other than my own name in Japanese.

I thought they had stamps for that.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#87

Post by idahoduncan »

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'm following this approach. One of the most interesting things so far has been observing just how separate recall and production are. There are kanji that I can recognise instantly, and recall meanings and pronunciations, but I can't visualise them at all.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#88

Post by thaumasiotes »

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…

Well, I can say that I've spent more than eleven months learning common characters before learning any Japanese sounds, words, or grammar.

But the reason for that is that I was learning Chinese. I spent zero effort on learning any characters preliminary to that. There is no reason you'd need or want character knowledge.

My character knowledge is decent now, because eventually my learning method became "talk with Chinese people over Wechat", and if you do that you will necessarily learn common characters.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#89

Post by gwd »

jansan wrote: post #82
BrenBarn wrote: post #71

I mean, this is not a politically correct statement, but I think one line of reasoning from this is to say that Chinese characters (which is what kanji are) are not a great way to write down language for practical purposes. A friend of mine in grad school irreverently referred to the Chinese writing system as "a really huge, really inefficient syllabary", and I think there's some truth to that. The characters no doub…

Overall you are probably correct, but there are certain benefits from the Chinese character system. Long time ago I studied Japanese in Japan. On the way back to my home country I was sitting next to a bunch of Chinese people on the plane who did not speak any English or Japanese, but we were able to have a small conversation using Kanji/Chinese characters, because the characters' meanings are usually the same, altho…

> Overall you are probably correct, but there are certain benefits from the Chinese character system.

I mean yeah, it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. But consider this: We could do the same thing in English as in Japanese -- replace loads of letters with Chinese characters: Write "跑ing" instead of "running", and so on. The French and German and Russians and Spanish could all do the same thing with their languages; and then when traveling, people could at a basic level read the signs and menus, and communicate at a basic level by writing, without having to know anything about the language.

Would you choose, post-facto, to add Chinese characters to English?

For my part, I'd say "no way". English orthography is already hard enough for my son to learn, without having to add characters on top of it.

ETA: Just for kicks, I asked Claude to try its hand at writing the opening lines of Pride and Prejudice in this manner:

It is a 真理 universally 認知ed, that a 単一 男 in 所有 of a good 財産 must be in 欲 of a 妻.

However 少 知n the 感情s or 見解s of such a 男 may be on his 最初 入ing a 近所, this 真理 is so 好 固定ed in the 心s of the 周囲 家族s, that he is 考慮ed as the 正当 財産 of some 一 or 他 of their 娘s.

"My 親愛 Mr. Bennet," 言ed his 夫人 to him 一日, "have you 聞ed that Netherfield Park is 貸 at 最後?"

Mr. Bennet 返答ed that he had 不.

"But it is," 戻ed she; "for Mrs. Long has 丁度 been here, and she 告ed me 全 about it."

Mr. Bennet 作 no 答.

"Do 不 you 欲 to 知 who has 取n it?" 叫ed his 妻, 不耐. "You 欲 to 告 me, and I have no 反対 to 聞ing it."

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#90

Post by thaumasiotes »

lyall wrote: post #45
timr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

> 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 flawlessly.

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