6 ms·

Maybe they should just romanize (switch to Latin script) the way Vietnam did.

by marcoperaza 9y ago

innocentoldguy 9y ago
It’s hard to do in Japanese due to all the homonyms. Kanji gives meaning where romanizations would not.
- fasdgafa 9y ago
  This hits you hard when you read children's books for the first time as an adult.
- adrianN 9y ago
  Early video games didn't have enough resolution to display Kanji, which is why all text was Kana-only. With spaces as word separators and sentence context homonyms are no more of a problem than in other languages.
  - innocentoldguy 9y ago
    What do video games have to do with it? Pong didn't have the resolution to display Shakespeare, but we didn't stop using words because of it. Video games provide a visual context that reading alone does not. Also, early video games, especially consoles like the NES Famicom, were geared towards kids who don't understand many kanji. The same is true of books aimed at children in Japan. They don't use kanji and they provide visual context in the form of illustrations. Ask any Japanese person why they use kanji and not just hiragana, katakana, or romaji and they'll tell you the same thing: Because it is hard to determine the meaning. They don't say it is impossible, just that it is difficult, which it is. For a contrived example, if I write はしをさがしてる。What am I looking for, a chopstick, a bridge, or the side of something? There is no way to discern from the sentence alone. However, if I use this kanji for hashi, 箸, then it is obvious I'm talking about chopsticks. There is no ambiguity. This doesn't always help. Sometimes the homonyms use the same kanji. 青山, for instance, can be read あおやま, which is a surname, or it can be read せいざん, which means a lush, green mountain. Most of the time though, kanji provides meaning and clarity where hiragana, katakana, and romaji do not.
- Asooka 9y ago
  Spoken language doesn't have kanji and people can communicate just fine.
  - innocenat 9y ago
    Spoken language has accent.
  - HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
    In mandarin people tend to add lots of little "particles" (not sure about the proper linguistic term) when they speak, which seems to be a way of adapting to homophones.
  - innocentoldguy 9y ago
    @HumanDrivenDev - Right, because in spoken conversation the listener can ask for clarification when the speaker's commentary is ambiguous, which happens all the time. You cannot do that when you're reading a book.
peterburkimsher 9y ago
The hardest part for me is not the characters (I type using Pinyin, which is Romanised). What Chinese lacks is spaces between words. Even Korean has spaces. It makes reading a large block of text so much easier, and it helps me to identify vocabulary that I recognise. Adding spaces and Pinyin are just a couple of the many features of Pingtype. https://pingtype.github.io https://pingtype.github.io
stordoff 9y ago
One thing I've noticed whilst trying to learn Japanese is that reading long stretches of romaji/kana is just tedious. There's certainly overhead to learning kanji (especially as a non-native speaker), but I'm not sure romanisation alone would make for a better language.
HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
You've been down-voted, but it's something I often think about as well. Chinese speakers - even those who speak chinese languages that aren't usually written - seem to have a deep attachment to characters. But the attachment is not free.

Maybe they should just romanize (switch to Latin script) the way Vietnam did.

innocentoldguy 9y ago

It’s hard to do in Japanese due to all the homonyms. Kanji gives meaning where romanizations would not.

fasdgafa 9y ago
This hits you hard when you read children's books for the first time as an adult.
adrianN 9y ago
Early video games didn't have enough resolution to display Kanji, which is why all text was Kana-only. With spaces as word separators and sentence context homonyms are no more of a problem than in other languages.
- innocentoldguy 9y ago
  What do video games have to do with it? Pong didn't have the resolution to display Shakespeare, but we didn't stop using words because of it. Video games provide a visual context that reading alone does not. Also, early video games, especially consoles like the NES Famicom, were geared towards kids who don't understand many kanji. The same is true of books aimed at children in Japan. They don't use kanji and they provide visual context in the form of illustrations. Ask any Japanese person why they use kanji and not just hiragana, katakana, or romaji and they'll tell you the same thing: Because it is hard to determine the meaning. They don't say it is impossible, just that it is difficult, which it is. For a contrived example, if I write はしをさがしてる。What am I looking for, a chopstick, a bridge, or the side of something? There is no way to discern from the sentence alone. However, if I use this kanji for hashi, 箸, then it is obvious I'm talking about chopsticks. There is no ambiguity. This doesn't always help. Sometimes the homonyms use the same kanji. 青山, for instance, can be read あおやま, which is a surname, or it can be read せいざん, which means a lush, green mountain. Most of the time though, kanji provides meaning and clarity where hiragana, katakana, and romaji do not.
Asooka 9y ago
Spoken language doesn't have kanji and people can communicate just fine.
- innocenat 9y ago
  Spoken language has accent.
- HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
  In mandarin people tend to add lots of little "particles" (not sure about the proper linguistic term) when they speak, which seems to be a way of adapting to homophones.
- innocentoldguy 9y ago
  @HumanDrivenDev - Right, because in spoken conversation the listener can ask for clarification when the speaker's commentary is ambiguous, which happens all the time. You cannot do that when you're reading a book.

peterburkimsher 9y ago

The hardest part for me is not the characters (I type using Pinyin, which is Romanised). What Chinese lacks is spaces between words. Even Korean has spaces. It makes reading a large block of text so much easier, and it helps me to identify vocabulary that I recognise. Adding spaces and Pinyin are just a couple of the many features of Pingtype. https://pingtype.github.io https://pingtype.github.io

stordoff 9y ago

One thing I've noticed whilst trying to learn Japanese is that reading long stretches of romaji/kana is just tedious. There's certainly overhead to learning kanji (especially as a non-native speaker), but I'm not sure romanisation alone would make for a better language.

HumanDrivenDev 9y ago

You've been down-voted, but it's something I often think about as well. Chinese speakers - even those who speak chinese languages that aren't usually written - seem to have a deep attachment to characters. But the attachment is not free.