4 ms·
Actually I disagree with the news story notion. News programs in Japanese are always subtitled with text, quoting and sometimes paraphrasing what the reporter i
by plnewman 16y ago
Actually I disagree with the news story notion. News programs in Japanese are always subtitled with text, quoting and sometimes paraphrasing what the reporter is talking about. There are ten tons of homonyms in Japanese, and inflected regional dialects.
I don't think the bastardized Katakana-ization of foreign words helps. What is encouraging is that new sounds are making their way slowly into the language, particularly the distinction between "b" and "v" that's beginning to emerge, at least for loan words.
- nandemo 16y agoThe subtitles thing is just a custom. I find it amazing that people believe the Japanese need subtitles in order to understand spoken Japanese. How the hell would the Japanese listen to news radio if they needed subtitles?
- plnewman 16y agoWell, once upon a time I started noticing people speaking regional dialects 'translated' into standard Japanese. I think they do serve the utility of making things a little easier to understand, at least in some cases.
- gcheong 16y agoNews story was probably a bad example, but how about say blind people using Japanese braille which appears to be completely phonetic? Or how about the fact that furigana are often printed to aid people (e.g children) in determining how to read the Kanji, even for standard Kanji? Certainly Kanji can help after you know them but is it actually necessary?
- plnewman 16y agoI don't disagree with those examples, and I can't pretend to sympathize with a blind Japanese person reading Braille, for example. I do think that Japanese is an extremely complex language, and ability to recognize characters and vocabulary are closely intertwined. Kanji is entrenched, but is it necessary? Probably not strictly speaking.