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Have you read japanese written only with hiragana? The language has so many homonyms it is hard to distinguish them from a text as it is a heavily context based
by asutekku 7y ago
Have you read japanese written only with hiragana? The language has so many homonyms it is hard to distinguish them from a text as it is a heavily context based language. I’d argue abolishing kanji and using only hiragana/katakana or roman alphabet makes learning the language harder after the very beginning when your vocab starts to increase.
- adrianN 7y agoIt works perfectly fine in older computer games that don't have the resolution to display Kanji.
- csa 7y agoIt’s functional, but definitely not optimal. Even as a non-native reader, reading 100% kana makes my eyes bleed — I wouldn’t wish that on anyone who actually knows kanji.
- solarmist 7y agoI want to agree with you (having spent many hours learning kanji and feeling like after I've learned the kanji, they're valuable to my comprehension), but having learned Korean I can see how you can eventually get along without them and in the end I feel like it's equivalent to Latin and English. Knowing the Latin makes things easier, but I didn't have trouble with English before I knew the roots of words. My understanding now is just richer nowadays.
- redthrow 7y agoI'd recommend playing the excellent SNES game Mother 2 (マザー２）, a huge hit in Japan and nobody complained about the text being difficult to read. Or you can watch one of the let's play videos with narration here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F_UrqsO2JQ0&list=PLC4EWNG6GsuY5SExvHdnN9l9nP_ghz5vo&index=2&t=0s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F_UrqsO2JQ0&list=PLC4EWNG6GsuY...
- edflsafoiewq 7y agoItoi intentionally eschewed kanji so that players would "not read the text by sight, but out loud, cherishing the sound of each and every letter".
- innocenat 7y agoBut games don't show you pages and pages of Hiragana. And it's old games -- it's accepted technical limitation. Have you read pages and pages in Hiragana? Or even paragraphs? It's not fun, and it's take a lot of concentration.
- redthrow 7y agoIt's no harder than having conversations in spoken Japanese where you don't see any text, kanji or otherwise. It would look awkward initially, but that's just because people are just used to the status quo which is kanji-kana mix.
- innocenat 7y agoSpoken Japanese has intonation and rhythm which make identifying word boundaries and homonyms easier. Reading hiragana (especially without space as word boundaries) is totally different. Reading long hiragana by speaking aloud help, but there is still a problem of ha/wa and he/e.
- redthrow 7y agoUsing space is a given if you write exclusively in kana. See Kanamoji-kai: http://kanamozi.org/ http://kanamozi.org/ Also, the very reason there are so many homonyms in written text in the first place is because of the kanji (over)usage - that is, because people think there are visual cues they are less careful about choosing words that are also understood easily by people listening to the words. When people speak, at least if they are a competent speaker, people tend to avoid the overuse of homonyms (mostly kango).
- oska 7y agoWe always get this reply in this (endlessly repeated) conversation. However, as the person you are replying to says, blind and vision impaired people are perfectly proficient readers using Japanese Braille [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Braille https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Braille
- asutekku 7y agoJust because they can do it doesn’t make it optimal.
- oska 7y agoAnd have you ever sought out what opinion Japanese Braille readers have of the system? Whether they find it "less than optimal"? I can't find the references right now but my memory from reading up on it at one time is that users were very happy with the system, that there is a fair amount of material transcribed into Japanese Braille, that it's quite easy to learn and that children become proficient readers faster than child learners of the regular writing system.
- solarmist 7y ago"I want to agree with you (having spent many hours learning kanji and feeling like after I've learned the kanji, they're valuable to my comprehension), but having learned Korean I can see how you can eventually get along without them and in the end I feel like it's equivalent to Latin and English. Knowing the Latin makes things easier, but I didn't have trouble with English before I knew the roots of words. My understanding now is just richer nowadays." Quoted from my other reply.
- jason0597 7y agoIntroducing spaces between words and particles helps immensely