4 ms·

Anyone has a link for some trivia info about speed, in words per minute, for a 1915 / ~1930 Japanese writer using such typewriter vs. an English one?

jillesvangurp 5y ago
Kanji, like many Asian scripts, has no word spacing. So what is and is not a word is a bit of a hard problem. Implementing word count for kanji is a non trivial problem. There's a Norwegian that did a machine learned stemmer for Kanji for Elasticsearch at some point to group characters in meaningful groups. Probably characters per minute is a better comparison but it's still apples and oranges as you typically need less characters in kanji to spell out the same thing.
- Blikkentrekker 5y ago
  Where to put spaces in Japanese if Japanese should be written with spaces is a trivial and solved problem. Texts intended for children in full hiragana or old video game texts in full hiragana typically include spaces for ease of reading and they agree on where to put them. I don't understand the common argument that Japanese has no concept of “words”; it is true that Japanese orthography lacks them, but Japanese speakers intuitively agree on where spaces should be put. I think the real cause of this might simply be that in romanization, it is common to see spaces put where they shouldn't, and that on one end a common way to romanize contrasts with what feels intuitive makes people think that it's a difficult issue with no easy answer, but there is a very easy and solved answer, one that's simply different from the most common form of romanizing outside of linguistic textbooks. Having said hat, they are no indication for typing speed, but neither are words in English since there can be long and short words too but probably more extreme in Japanese as a sentence that merely consists of a single very long verb would be considered “one word” under this scheme, as that's how it is pronounced prosodically.
- unnouinceput 5y ago
  Yup, I understand that. But a fair comparison would be "here is a novel, in both Japanese and English. Now who will type it faster? The Japanese writer using a Japanese typewriter or the English writer using English typewriter?"
- buu700 5y ago
  Maybe measuring semantic density would make more sense than literal characters/words. Produce two matching texts in Japanese and English that multiple experts in both languages can agree are comparable in both meaning and relative verbosity, then divide the total number of English words by the Japanese typer's time, and you'll have a rough WPM score that can be used for more apples-to-apples comparisons.

jillesvangurp 5y ago

Kanji, like many Asian scripts, has no word spacing. So what is and is not a word is a bit of a hard problem. Implementing word count for kanji is a non trivial problem. There's a Norwegian that did a machine learned stemmer for Kanji for Elasticsearch at some point to group characters in meaningful groups. Probably characters per minute is a better comparison but it's still apples and oranges as you typically need less characters in kanji to spell out the same thing.

Blikkentrekker 5y ago
Where to put spaces in Japanese if Japanese should be written with spaces is a trivial and solved problem. Texts intended for children in full hiragana or old video game texts in full hiragana typically include spaces for ease of reading and they agree on where to put them. I don't understand the common argument that Japanese has no concept of “words”; it is true that Japanese orthography lacks them, but Japanese speakers intuitively agree on where spaces should be put. I think the real cause of this might simply be that in romanization, it is common to see spaces put where they shouldn't, and that on one end a common way to romanize contrasts with what feels intuitive makes people think that it's a difficult issue with no easy answer, but there is a very easy and solved answer, one that's simply different from the most common form of romanizing outside of linguistic textbooks. Having said hat, they are no indication for typing speed, but neither are words in English since there can be long and short words too but probably more extreme in Japanese as a sentence that merely consists of a single very long verb would be considered “one word” under this scheme, as that's how it is pronounced prosodically.
unnouinceput 5y ago
Yup, I understand that. But a fair comparison would be "here is a novel, in both Japanese and English. Now who will type it faster? The Japanese writer using a Japanese typewriter or the English writer using English typewriter?"
buu700 5y ago
Maybe measuring semantic density would make more sense than literal characters/words. Produce two matching texts in Japanese and English that multiple experts in both languages can agree are comparable in both meaning and relative verbosity, then divide the total number of English words by the Japanese typer's time, and you'll have a rough WPM score that can be used for more apples-to-apples comparisons.