6 ms·

Thus proving that symbolic meaning applied at the glyph level is too cumbersome to be practical because it requires pure memorization of all possible combinatio

by haimez 10y ago

Thus proving that symbolic meaning applied at the glyph level is too cumbersome to be practical because it requires pure memorization of all possible combinations of glyphs and conjugations thereof.

sdrothrock 10y ago
Thus proving that the alphabet is too cumbersome to be practical because it requires the pure memorization of all possible combinations of letters, with the lengths of such combinations becoming longer and longer as words are added to vocabulary.
- madeofpalk 10y ago
  Eh. It's a "leaky abstraction". Makes things easier, until it doesn't. Much lik3 "I before E, except after C"
  - sdrothrock 10y ago
    The primary problem with people who don't know Japanese or Chinese arguing against kanji/hanji is that they use very loose comparisons that they think are 1:1. For example, when you write "inconceivable," you're not regurgitating every single letter in a line from memory. You probably remember the prefix "in," "conceive," and you know "able." You probably also know the common patterns "cei" or "eive" or "con," so the word "inconceivable" really isn't as complex as the initial length makes it look, as long as you know the blocks. Kanji/hanzi are the same way -- they look complex and inscrutable to the uneducated eye, but they're all made of common building blocks that make it easier to remember them. After all, human memory works roughly the same way all the world around; people wouldn't be able to memorize thousands of 20-stroke character if they were all completely patternless. The vocabulary utilizing kanji/hanzi works the same way. Someone could look at "inconceivable" and say "well shit, that doesn't make sense! It's long, you'd have to memorize so many letters, and the letters themselves have so many bits! Plus it has 'in' in it, which makes no sense because 'in' commonly means 'inside of something', and 'con' usually means 'to swindle someone'! This alphabet thing is completely useless." It's absurd, reductionist, and a bit offensive.
    - Margh 10y ago
      A child/foreigner can point at "inconceivable" and ask: 'what does "in-con-ceiv-able" mean?' as opposed to 'what does "..." mean' A japanese beginner will see 照り焼き and say "uhhhh.. ri..." compare this with seeing テリヤキ
      - sdrothrock 10y ago
        > 'what does "in-con-ceiv-able" mean?' Really? You don't think someone with less experience in English would say "what does... inkonsayvaybull mean?" There are plenty of instances where the word is not pronounced the way you think it is. > A japanese beginner will see 照り焼き and say "uhhhh.. ri..." A child or beginner would probably be more likely to say "uh, what's that thing with the 日 and the 火, it's something ri something ki." Just because something is a symbol doesn't mean you can't describe it. Children are also very likely to just sketch out a picture of what they remember, even if it's incorrect, and you can usually figure that out.
        mveety 10y ago
        > Really? You don't think someone with less experience in English would say "what does... inkonsayvaybull mean?" There are plenty of instances where the word is not pronounced the way you think it is. You're missing his point and English is a crappy example because it's spelling is an unmitigated disaster. For example, if you can read and vocalize the Greek alphabet, you can just ask someone what "νόστιμο φαγητό"* means because you can vocalize it. You only need basic knowledge of the alphabet there. Where as with Chinese/Japanese you need to have a good base of characters to be able to potentially vocalize an unknown character which requires much more work than learning a new alphabet. (* νόστιμο φαγητό means delicious food)
        FabHK 10y ago
        Similarly in Spanish, which has great consistency, in that if you see a word written, you pretty much know how to pronounce it, and vice versa. English is pretty bad in that department, but still much better than Chinese. While many Chinese characters have a phonetic component (in addition to a component related to the meaning), it rarely corresponds exactly to the current pronunciation (in Mandarin). Furthermore, you can very rarely conjure the right character out of pronunciation and and some aspect of the meaning.
PeCaN 10y ago
Alternatively, it could mean that Google Translate is not very good. If I had to guess, most Japanese people aren't going to have much trouble disambiguating ‘eat’ from ‘eclipse’. (And as zorceta explains, Chinese uses different hanzi for them anyway.)

by haimez 10y ago

Thus proving that symbolic meaning applied at the glyph level is too cumbersome to be practical because it requires pure memorization of all possible combinations of glyphs and conjugations thereof.

sdrothrock 10y ago

Thus proving that the alphabet is too cumbersome to be practical because it requires the pure memorization of all possible combinations of letters, with the lengths of such combinations becoming longer and longer as words are added to vocabulary.

madeofpalk 10y ago
Eh. It's a "leaky abstraction". Makes things easier, until it doesn't. Much lik3 "I before E, except after C"
- sdrothrock 10y ago
  The primary problem with people who don't know Japanese or Chinese arguing against kanji/hanji is that they use very loose comparisons that they think are 1:1. For example, when you write "inconceivable," you're not regurgitating every single letter in a line from memory. You probably remember the prefix "in," "conceive," and you know "able." You probably also know the common patterns "cei" or "eive" or "con," so the word "inconceivable" really isn't as complex as the initial length makes it look, as long as you know the blocks. Kanji/hanzi are the same way -- they look complex and inscrutable to the uneducated eye, but they're all made of common building blocks that make it easier to remember them. After all, human memory works roughly the same way all the world around; people wouldn't be able to memorize thousands of 20-stroke character if they were all completely patternless. The vocabulary utilizing kanji/hanzi works the same way. Someone could look at "inconceivable" and say "well shit, that doesn't make sense! It's long, you'd have to memorize so many letters, and the letters themselves have so many bits! Plus it has 'in' in it, which makes no sense because 'in' commonly means 'inside of something', and 'con' usually means 'to swindle someone'! This alphabet thing is completely useless." It's absurd, reductionist, and a bit offensive.
  - Margh 10y ago
    A child/foreigner can point at "inconceivable" and ask: 'what does "in-con-ceiv-able" mean?' as opposed to 'what does "..." mean' A japanese beginner will see 照り焼き and say "uhhhh.. ri..." compare this with seeing テリヤキ
    - sdrothrock 10y ago
      > 'what does "in-con-ceiv-able" mean?' Really? You don't think someone with less experience in English would say "what does... inkonsayvaybull mean?" There are plenty of instances where the word is not pronounced the way you think it is. > A japanese beginner will see 照り焼き and say "uhhhh.. ri..." A child or beginner would probably be more likely to say "uh, what's that thing with the 日 and the 火, it's something ri something ki." Just because something is a symbol doesn't mean you can't describe it. Children are also very likely to just sketch out a picture of what they remember, even if it's incorrect, and you can usually figure that out.
      - mveety 10y ago
        > Really? You don't think someone with less experience in English would say "what does... inkonsayvaybull mean?" There are plenty of instances where the word is not pronounced the way you think it is. You're missing his point and English is a crappy example because it's spelling is an unmitigated disaster. For example, if you can read and vocalize the Greek alphabet, you can just ask someone what "νόστιμο φαγητό"* means because you can vocalize it. You only need basic knowledge of the alphabet there. Where as with Chinese/Japanese you need to have a good base of characters to be able to potentially vocalize an unknown character which requires much more work than learning a new alphabet. (* νόστιμο φαγητό means delicious food)
        FabHK 10y ago
        Similarly in Spanish, which has great consistency, in that if you see a word written, you pretty much know how to pronounce it, and vice versa. English is pretty bad in that department, but still much better than Chinese. While many Chinese characters have a phonetic component (in addition to a component related to the meaning), it rarely corresponds exactly to the current pronunciation (in Mandarin). Furthermore, you can very rarely conjure the right character out of pronunciation and and some aspect of the meaning.

PeCaN 10y ago

Alternatively, it could mean that Google Translate is not very good. If I had to guess, most Japanese people aren't going to have much trouble disambiguating ‘eat’ from ‘eclipse’. (And as zorceta explains, Chinese uses different hanzi for them anyway.)