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Am I missing something subtle in this Kanji example, or all 4 names actually written the same?: "There are four Japanese women whose names you have to sort: Ju

Am I missing something subtle in this Kanji example, or all 4 names actually written the same?: "There are four Japanese women whose names you have to sort: Junko, Atsuko, Kiyoko, and Akiko. This does not seem difficult, until they each show you how they write their names in kanji: 淳子 (Junko) 淳子 (Atsuko) 淳子 (Kiyoko) 淳子 (Akiko)" I'm not familiar with Japanese at all (and have never had to deal with localization beyond date formats), even less so written, but these seem like wildly different pronunciations for some spelled the same. I know English has its own large set of warts with pronunciations and spellings (even disregarding US vs every other English speaking nation), but this seems overly odd. How do you get further context on how to pronounce a proper name like this? The post mentions context, but obviously in the above example, lacking the "abc" spelling (as the post terms it), what context do you have to know the proper pronunciation?

segfaultbuserr 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_name#Difficulty_of_reading_names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_name#Difficulty_of_re...
ssttevee 7y ago
It's actually not possible. There are some cases where the kanji characters are only used for the meaning and have literally no contribution to the pronunciation. That is why every Japanese service provider will ask you for the pronunciation, without fail.
asutekku 7y ago
That’s why japanese people sometimes when introducing themselves also mention the kanjis because of the wildly different readings. There is literally no way knowing the reading if the user doesn’t provide it.
- csours 7y ago
  Is this why business cards are so ubiquitous?
  - mikekchar 7y ago
    I don't know if this is really true, but I've been told it's really so that you don't forget people's names when you first meet them. In Japanese, it is impolite to use the second person pronoun ("you") with people you don't know. So if you forget their name, it can get pretty awkward if you want to talk about them. When you receive business card, you are suppose to inspect it with great attention and it is common to hold it in your hand or put it on the table in front of you while the person is there. Whether that really is an aide to help you remember names, it certainly does help! It's the thing about Japanese culture that I'm the worst at (and to add insult to injury, I've yet to print any business cards after 10 years here -- it's so embarrassing when I meet people :-P ).
gwilkes 7y ago
Yes, they are all written the same. This is not too much of an issue as not only do sites like Amazon ask for the pronunciation of your name, most any important paper form would have it as well. In more informal contexts you would just have to ask the person how to pronounce the name. We often need to do this in English with unusual or foreign names.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
devilsbabe 7y ago
> How do you get further context on how to pronounce a proper name like this? You don't. There's no way to know which pronunciation to use other than the person telling you.
jhanschoo 7y ago
On Japanese forms that require you to use your name, you provide them with how your name looks in kanji, as well as how they are read (in their syllabic alphabet). When introducing yourself in speaking, you may also mention how your name is written. It's not a problem in the sense that when you are in a position to ask someone for their name, you are also in a position to ask them for both the orthographic and phonetic versions of their name; it's just not something speakers most other language are familiar with handling. Also note that most Japanese people you encounter will have names with a couple obvious readings. In the 淳子 example, Junko should be the most likely reading, followed by Atsuko, seeing as "atsu-" is typically associated with a different kanji. Similarly for Kiyoko and Akiko; in usage out of names, "kiyo-" and "aka"/"aki" are primarily written with other kanji. Since all "native-Japanese" readings for the word are typically written with other kanji, and this kanji is rarely seen in normal text with a native reading, what's left is the most common "Chinese" reading for the word, "jun". There are more "species" of Japanese personal names, less common, including names written completely in their alphabet, or names where kanji is used only for their phonetic reading so that when written together it forms a native-Japanese word (and hence name), or archaic names with archaic or metaphorical readings, or names of foreign East-Asians that are read as an approximation of how they are pronounced in their respective native language. Put together, most names have an obvious reading and with enough time in Japanese society you should know the obvious exceptions, but the rules for pronunciation are still sufficiently haphazard and irregular that asking for pronunciation is necessary to be sure. c.f. mispronunciation of Saoirse in English for a related phenomenon. In forms,one still does better by asking for both orthographic/phonetic rather than having a huge rulesets and tables to divine pronunciations from orthography (with necessary mispredictions), except perhaps in interactive contexts like in IMEs. You may think this all is complex, but when it comes to names, there is always a lot of complexity to it based on historical linguistic and orthographic phenomena, but one is blind to them when one grows up in them. Consider that the pronunciation of many English cities are not what you'd expect from just looking at how they are written, or that York comes from Proto-Celtic Eburos + akom -> Latin Eboracum -> Old English Eoforwic -> Norse Jorvik -> Middle English York. Also consider that in many languages, e.g. Latin, words need to be memorized in more than one form, since historical processes make it that the stems for different tenses cannot be regularly constructed.
rococode 7y ago
Many kanji have numerous pronunciations. I have a dictionary extension on my browser that may help illustrate: https://i.imgur.com/Nftkjks.png https://i.imgur.com/Nftkjks.png According to the dictionary, the word 淳 can be read as jun, shun, atsui, atsu, atsushi, kiyo, kiyoshi, makoto, or sunao. And evidently this is not fully complete, since Akiko can also use that character. It's definitely one of the more annoying parts of Japanese, and ultimately you just have to learn common words and for ones where there are multiple common pronunciations (like these names), someone will ask for the pronunciation (for names) or it will be clear from context (for words). Also, if you weren't aware, there's also a thing called furigana, which is essentially writing the alphabet really small above a kanji word so you know the pronunciation. Really useful and something that Chinese sorely lacks imo.
- bigger_cheese 7y ago
  >According to the dictionary, the word 淳 can be read as jun, shun, atsui, atsu, atsushi, kiyo, kiyoshi, makoto, or sunao. And evidently this is not fully complete, since Akiko can also use that character. I think the "ko" suffix comes from the second Kanji character "子" which means child (I think, it has been over a decade since i studied Japanese but that particular Kanji character looks familiar to me). So I believe it is similar to how a lot of English surnames end in "son" (Johnson, Anderson, Harrison) etc.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    You're right that 子 means child. But there is no similarity to English (or any language) patronymics. 子 was used as an element of girls' names because it's good for a girl to be youthful. "Johnson" lets you know that the person is the son of John, not that the person is himself named John.
    - bigger_cheese 7y ago
      Ahh that makes sense thanks for confirming. I studied Japanese in Primary school until grade 10. We had only just started on Kanji when I stopped taking the classes. I was surprised I could still read all the hiragana and katakana in the source article I guess I retained more of it than I thought.
fenomas 7y ago
> wildly different pronunciations for some spelled the same The fundamental point to understand is that those names aren't spelled the same, they're written the same. The writings and readings are essentially distinct things; neither is a representation of the other. (As an aside, Japanese doesn't really have spelling as we think of it. It has phonetic characters, but their names map 1:1 with their pronunciation, so "spelling" a Japanese word is the same thing as just saying it.)
- a1369209993 7y ago
  > their names map 1:1 with their pronunciation Not quite, eg ki'yu vs kyu vs ki'u and n'a (んあ) vs na (な), but unlike in english those tend to be pathological corner cases that you can either ignore entirely in practice or easily handle (eg the Ci+yV <-> CyV convention).
  - teraflop 7y ago
    All of the examples you mentioned are pronounced differently, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
    - a1369209993 7y ago
      n'a (んあ) and na (な) are pronounced the same (not 1:1) k-ee-y-oo and k-y-oo are distinct pronunciations that are both written as kiyu (きゅ) (also not 1:1, though this could be considered a accent maybe?) I wasn't trying to make a point, beyond "spelling a [any] word is not just the same thing as saying it".
      - level3 7y ago
        You're confusing spelling (using the alphabet) with spelling (using hiragana/katakana). In Japanese, spelling IS the same as saying it. きゆ and きゅ are pronounced differently because they're spelled differently (notice the size of the ゆ). Same goes for んあ and な.
      - fenomas 7y ago
Iv 7y ago
It seems odd because it is. I live in Japan, tried to learn Japanese like I did learn English and German: through reading, as the true asocial geek I am. Well, that's not possible unless you know about 1000 kanjis, unless you stick with kids book or some mangas (which, actually, I am not that interested in) To learn Japanese you need to learn to speak it first. I stopped caring about kanjis wen I realized that a 15 year old, top of her class, was having difficulties reading news articles because of some words she did not know. That's polemical and I would not tell it that upfront to my Japanese friends but I feel like kanjis are a vastly inferior writing system compared to the alphabets they have. The reason why it still exists is to create an educational hierarchy: the more kanjis you know, the more educated you are. Kanjis are of Chinese origin, they occupy a similar place in Japanese culture than Latin does in European cultures. I wish they would do like Koreans and get rid of it altogether, but it will never happen. The culture here is far too conservative for such a brutal change. They even call the furikana (kanji "subtitles" that explicit the pronunciation) as a dumbing down. This is an example where obfuscation is confused for depth.
- mikekchar 7y ago
  And as a counter example, I like kanji and learned Japanese by reading (though I also like manga, so perhaps it was helpful). I find kanji very helpful in learning vocabulary. In fact, I actually measured how fast I could learn vocabulary containing kanji I didn't know by learning the kanji first, versus learning the vocabulary phonetically. It was about the same. However, as there are only about 2200 kanji in the list of commonly used kanji and there are about 20,000 words you need for adult level proficiency, it means that each kanji is used in, on average 10 words. Actually, it's even better than that because the first 1000 most common kanji are used in 90% of the words you will encounter. I can learn vocabulary with kanji I know dramatically faster than vocabulary with phonetics alone. Ironically, I think it's even more helpful in Japanese than it is in Chinese because there are so many readings for the character that if you learn the word phonetically, you may have no idea what the root of the word is. Kanji is frustrating to write, but a joy to read, IMHO. Yes, you need to learn 2000 (or so) characters, but, let's face it -- you've got years to do it. I can now read words that I don't know and have a pretty good idea what they mean -- something that would be practically impossible phonetically in Japanese. In fact, when I'm faced with new vocabulary, I often ask people to write it for me (just in the air) -- as soon as I see the kanji I almost always know what the word means. I've often thought how superior this writing system is from roman phonetic characters (which bizarre historical spelling anachronisms to boot) ;-) I appreciate that you don't agree, but I hope you'll also understand that I have no intention of grading your education level on the number of kanji you know.
wodenokoto 7y ago
You are missing the subtle fact that they are written the same :) For that situation, where you only have the name, you simply can’t tell with confidence the reading. Japanese name law (at least last time it was paraphrased to me) allows you to attach any non-obscene reading to any non-obscene kanji configuration. All business cards clearly show how to read the name printed on it. Yes, this is odd.
needle0 7y ago
Yes they are all written exactly the same, and the reason it seems so bizarre to you is because you're trying to think of everything in the framing of phonograms, where rule number one is sound and characters are inseparably bound. Since that was probably the only type of language you dealt with your entire life, that feels like the natural way of things, and anything that goes against that rule feels wrong. Japanese and other Asian languages operate under the concept of ideograms, where sound and characters are NOT 1:1 mapped. As unbelievable as it may be, not much problems occur in everyday life when everyone involved is aware of those rules and operates under that assumption. The writing system you were born to is not the only valid way to do things, much like Imperial is not the only measurement system, Christianity is not the only religion, vi/Emacs are not the only text editors, etc, etc.
- pif 7y ago
  It's not a matter of who has it bigger! The basic question the OP asked, and you did not answer, is: if those names are written the same, how do you know which woman we are talking about?
  - needle0 7y ago
    If there are people present in the same space with identically-appearing names, they are merely given secondary characteristics (be it family names, explicit pronunciations via yomigana, or some other property) to differentiate. How is that any different from if there are people present in western-language space with identical first names?
unsignedint 7y ago
You can't, and legally, you can register any way to read certain kanji -- Japanese system only registers how it's written and do not track how to read them. (Some other government document requires you to register how to read them, but there's no limitation.) So if you really wanted to 淳子 to read completely outside of how it's traditionally read, that's acceptable. So called DQN names in Japan are largely because of this leniency.

segfaultbuserr 7y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_name#Difficulty_of_reading_names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_name#Difficulty_of_re...

ssttevee 7y ago

It's actually not possible. There are some cases where the kanji characters are only used for the meaning and have literally no contribution to the pronunciation. That is why every Japanese service provider will ask you for the pronunciation, without fail.

asutekku 7y ago

That’s why japanese people sometimes when introducing themselves also mention the kanjis because of the wildly different readings. There is literally no way knowing the reading if the user doesn’t provide it.

csours 7y ago
Is this why business cards are so ubiquitous?
- mikekchar 7y ago
  I don't know if this is really true, but I've been told it's really so that you don't forget people's names when you first meet them. In Japanese, it is impolite to use the second person pronoun ("you") with people you don't know. So if you forget their name, it can get pretty awkward if you want to talk about them. When you receive business card, you are suppose to inspect it with great attention and it is common to hold it in your hand or put it on the table in front of you while the person is there. Whether that really is an aide to help you remember names, it certainly does help! It's the thing about Japanese culture that I'm the worst at (and to add insult to injury, I've yet to print any business cards after 10 years here -- it's so embarrassing when I meet people :-P ).

gwilkes 7y ago

Yes, they are all written the same. This is not too much of an issue as not only do sites like Amazon ask for the pronunciation of your name, most any important paper form would have it as well. In more informal contexts you would just have to ask the person how to pronounce the name. We often need to do this in English with unusual or foreign names.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

devilsbabe 7y ago

> How do you get further context on how to pronounce a proper name like this? You don't. There's no way to know which pronunciation to use other than the person telling you.

jhanschoo 7y ago

On Japanese forms that require you to use your name, you provide them with how your name looks in kanji, as well as how they are read (in their syllabic alphabet). When introducing yourself in speaking, you may also mention how your name is written. It's not a problem in the sense that when you are in a position to ask someone for their name, you are also in a position to ask them for both the orthographic and phonetic versions of their name; it's just not something speakers most other language are familiar with handling. Also note that most Japanese people you encounter will have names with a couple obvious readings. In the 淳子 example, Junko should be the most likely reading, followed by Atsuko, seeing as "atsu-" is typically associated with a different kanji. Similarly for Kiyoko and Akiko; in usage out of names, "kiyo-" and "aka"/"aki" are primarily written with other kanji. Since all "native-Japanese" readings for the word are typically written with other kanji, and this kanji is rarely seen in normal text with a native reading, what's left is the most common "Chinese" reading for the word, "jun". There are more "species" of Japanese personal names, less common, including names written completely in their alphabet, or names where kanji is used only for their phonetic reading so that when written together it forms a native-Japanese word (and hence name), or archaic names with archaic or metaphorical readings, or names of foreign East-Asians that are read as an approximation of how they are pronounced in their respective native language. Put together, most names have an obvious reading and with enough time in Japanese society you should know the obvious exceptions, but the rules for pronunciation are still sufficiently haphazard and irregular that asking for pronunciation is necessary to be sure. c.f. mispronunciation of Saoirse in English for a related phenomenon. In forms,one still does better by asking for both orthographic/phonetic rather than having a huge rulesets and tables to divine pronunciations from orthography (with necessary mispredictions), except perhaps in interactive contexts like in IMEs. You may think this all is complex, but when it comes to names, there is always a lot of complexity to it based on historical linguistic and orthographic phenomena, but one is blind to them when one grows up in them. Consider that the pronunciation of many English cities are not what you'd expect from just looking at how they are written, or that York comes from Proto-Celtic Eburos + akom -> Latin Eboracum -> Old English Eoforwic -> Norse Jorvik -> Middle English York. Also consider that in many languages, e.g. Latin, words need to be memorized in more than one form, since historical processes make it that the stems for different tenses cannot be regularly constructed.

rococode 7y ago

Many kanji have numerous pronunciations. I have a dictionary extension on my browser that may help illustrate: https://i.imgur.com/Nftkjks.png https://i.imgur.com/Nftkjks.png According to the dictionary, the word 淳 can be read as jun, shun, atsui, atsu, atsushi, kiyo, kiyoshi, makoto, or sunao. And evidently this is not fully complete, since Akiko can also use that character. It's definitely one of the more annoying parts of Japanese, and ultimately you just have to learn common words and for ones where there are multiple common pronunciations (like these names), someone will ask for the pronunciation (for names) or it will be clear from context (for words). Also, if you weren't aware, there's also a thing called furigana, which is essentially writing the alphabet really small above a kanji word so you know the pronunciation. Really useful and something that Chinese sorely lacks imo.

bigger_cheese 7y ago
>According to the dictionary, the word 淳 can be read as jun, shun, atsui, atsu, atsushi, kiyo, kiyoshi, makoto, or sunao. And evidently this is not fully complete, since Akiko can also use that character. I think the "ko" suffix comes from the second Kanji character "子" which means child (I think, it has been over a decade since i studied Japanese but that particular Kanji character looks familiar to me). So I believe it is similar to how a lot of English surnames end in "son" (Johnson, Anderson, Harrison) etc.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  You're right that 子 means child. But there is no similarity to English (or any language) patronymics. 子 was used as an element of girls' names because it's good for a girl to be youthful. "Johnson" lets you know that the person is the son of John, not that the person is himself named John.
  - bigger_cheese 7y ago
    Ahh that makes sense thanks for confirming. I studied Japanese in Primary school until grade 10. We had only just started on Kanji when I stopped taking the classes. I was surprised I could still read all the hiragana and katakana in the source article I guess I retained more of it than I thought.

fenomas 7y ago

> wildly different pronunciations for some spelled the same The fundamental point to understand is that those names aren't spelled the same, they're written the same. The writings and readings are essentially distinct things; neither is a representation of the other. (As an aside, Japanese doesn't really have spelling as we think of it. It has phonetic characters, but their names map 1:1 with their pronunciation, so "spelling" a Japanese word is the same thing as just saying it.)

a1369209993 7y ago
> their names map 1:1 with their pronunciation Not quite, eg ki'yu vs kyu vs ki'u and n'a (んあ) vs na (な), but unlike in english those tend to be pathological corner cases that you can either ignore entirely in practice or easily handle (eg the Ci+yV <-> CyV convention).
- teraflop 7y ago
  All of the examples you mentioned are pronounced differently, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
  - a1369209993 7y ago
    n'a (んあ) and na (な) are pronounced the same (not 1:1) k-ee-y-oo and k-y-oo are distinct pronunciations that are both written as kiyu (きゅ) (also not 1:1, though this could be considered a accent maybe?) I wasn't trying to make a point, beyond "spelling a [any] word is not just the same thing as saying it".
    - level3 7y ago
      You're confusing spelling (using the alphabet) with spelling (using hiragana/katakana). In Japanese, spelling IS the same as saying it. きゆ and きゅ are pronounced differently because they're spelled differently (notice the size of the ゆ). Same goes for んあ and な.
    - fenomas 7y ago

Iv 7y ago

It seems odd because it is. I live in Japan, tried to learn Japanese like I did learn English and German: through reading, as the true asocial geek I am. Well, that's not possible unless you know about 1000 kanjis, unless you stick with kids book or some mangas (which, actually, I am not that interested in) To learn Japanese you need to learn to speak it first. I stopped caring about kanjis wen I realized that a 15 year old, top of her class, was having difficulties reading news articles because of some words she did not know. That's polemical and I would not tell it that upfront to my Japanese friends but I feel like kanjis are a vastly inferior writing system compared to the alphabets they have. The reason why it still exists is to create an educational hierarchy: the more kanjis you know, the more educated you are. Kanjis are of Chinese origin, they occupy a similar place in Japanese culture than Latin does in European cultures. I wish they would do like Koreans and get rid of it altogether, but it will never happen. The culture here is far too conservative for such a brutal change. They even call the furikana (kanji "subtitles" that explicit the pronunciation) as a dumbing down. This is an example where obfuscation is confused for depth.

mikekchar 7y ago
And as a counter example, I like kanji and learned Japanese by reading (though I also like manga, so perhaps it was helpful). I find kanji very helpful in learning vocabulary. In fact, I actually measured how fast I could learn vocabulary containing kanji I didn't know by learning the kanji first, versus learning the vocabulary phonetically. It was about the same. However, as there are only about 2200 kanji in the list of commonly used kanji and there are about 20,000 words you need for adult level proficiency, it means that each kanji is used in, on average 10 words. Actually, it's even better than that because the first 1000 most common kanji are used in 90% of the words you will encounter. I can learn vocabulary with kanji I know dramatically faster than vocabulary with phonetics alone. Ironically, I think it's even more helpful in Japanese than it is in Chinese because there are so many readings for the character that if you learn the word phonetically, you may have no idea what the root of the word is. Kanji is frustrating to write, but a joy to read, IMHO. Yes, you need to learn 2000 (or so) characters, but, let's face it -- you've got years to do it. I can now read words that I don't know and have a pretty good idea what they mean -- something that would be practically impossible phonetically in Japanese. In fact, when I'm faced with new vocabulary, I often ask people to write it for me (just in the air) -- as soon as I see the kanji I almost always know what the word means. I've often thought how superior this writing system is from roman phonetic characters (which bizarre historical spelling anachronisms to boot) ;-) I appreciate that you don't agree, but I hope you'll also understand that I have no intention of grading your education level on the number of kanji you know.

wodenokoto 7y ago

You are missing the subtle fact that they are written the same :) For that situation, where you only have the name, you simply can’t tell with confidence the reading. Japanese name law (at least last time it was paraphrased to me) allows you to attach any non-obscene reading to any non-obscene kanji configuration. All business cards clearly show how to read the name printed on it. Yes, this is odd.

needle0 7y ago

Yes they are all written exactly the same, and the reason it seems so bizarre to you is because you're trying to think of everything in the framing of phonograms, where rule number one is sound and characters are inseparably bound. Since that was probably the only type of language you dealt with your entire life, that feels like the natural way of things, and anything that goes against that rule feels wrong. Japanese and other Asian languages operate under the concept of ideograms, where sound and characters are NOT 1:1 mapped. As unbelievable as it may be, not much problems occur in everyday life when everyone involved is aware of those rules and operates under that assumption. The writing system you were born to is not the only valid way to do things, much like Imperial is not the only measurement system, Christianity is not the only religion, vi/Emacs are not the only text editors, etc, etc.

pif 7y ago
It's not a matter of who has it bigger! The basic question the OP asked, and you did not answer, is: if those names are written the same, how do you know which woman we are talking about?
- needle0 7y ago
  If there are people present in the same space with identically-appearing names, they are merely given secondary characteristics (be it family names, explicit pronunciations via yomigana, or some other property) to differentiate. How is that any different from if there are people present in western-language space with identical first names?

unsignedint 7y ago

You can't, and legally, you can register any way to read certain kanji -- Japanese system only registers how it's written and do not track how to read them. (Some other government document requires you to register how to read them, but there's no limitation.) So if you really wanted to 淳子 to read completely outside of how it's traditionally read, that's acceptable. So called DQN names in Japan are largely because of this leniency.