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> Reading is similar until Kanji comes along I mean, sure, if you exclude the most complicated writing system currently in use in any natural language, Japanes

> Reading is similar until Kanji comes along I mean, sure, if you exclude the most complicated writing system currently in use in any natural language, Japanese is simple. I hear Chinese is really easy too if you just do everything in pinyin. Right, sarcasm off. Yes, the grammar is pretty simple. It has a mere three irregular verbs. The inflection can be somewhat unwieldy (温かくなかったら atatakakunakattara, if it were not warm) but it is nowhere near as complex as European languages. But. You can’t just dismiss kanji. They are the essence of the language and, counterintutively, are what make it easy to read in long form. A stream of hiragana is almost illegible; you need the kanji to be able to pick nouns and verbs out. And outside of very limited contexts, furigana (phonetic transcriptions of kanji) are rare, so you need to a reasonable command of kanji to get by.

deleted 4y ago
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detrites 4y ago
> outside of very limited contexts, furigana Sarcasm aside, I only take issue with this. The context here is learning Japanese, ie a beginner. A typical way to do that with any language is to use the enormous wealth of resources aimed at either kids or learners. Including in this case many popular manga. It's a context within which, of course, Furigana is widely available, as it's one of the ways Japanese themselves learn Kanji. And I would guess probably why it even exists, though I'm sure you could correct me on that. Your view of Japanese seems to be from a very high level, encompassing its totality or close to it. At that level your assertions may be correct and relevant, but that's not where my comments, nor the OP with their post, are aiming.
- ickoonite 4y ago
  OK, but you’re moving the goalposts. A written form of the language curated specifically for the purpose of learning is not really relevant to a discussion of the language, just as would be the case for any other language. That is not the language used in daily life. There are no furigana in a newspaper or on the Internet (technological assistance notwithstanding). Magazines, business communication…anything useful is off limits if you can’t read, say, 500 kanji at an absolute minimum. Anything more advanced, academia, etc. requires far more.
  - detrites 4y ago
    You think the goalposts have been "moved" because you've misinterpreted the context of this discussion. The original post we are all commenting on is an introduction to some basic concepts of Japanese, aimed at programmers. After learning several languages to a basic conversational level, Japanese was by far the most logical, simple, and had the least "gotcha's" or exceptions. On the whole it was a breath of fresh air compared to others. My comments regarding the relative ease Japanese can be learned to a basic, useful level versus same attempted in other languages stand. Attempts to reframe them as regarding a level of complete mastery won't alter that.
kibwen 4y ago
Can you explain why a stream of hiragana would be unreadable? It's a phonetic alphabet, right? Shouldn't it be just as readable as the phonetic alphabet for any other language?
- ickoonite 4y ago
  becauseitsbasicallylikewritinglikethissoquitehardtoparse
- matgessel 4y ago
  It's difficult to skim the stream of symbols and instantly recognize concepts. Think of a word finding box puzzle in English (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=word+finding+puzzle&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=word+finding+puzzle&iax=images&ia=...). It helps if you add spaces and periods, but I still think kanji make it easier to quickly pick out concepts. In this video, Yuta compares different ways of writing the same sentence and discusses efforts to eliminate Kanji: "Why Do Japanese Still Use Kanji?" • https://youtu.be/O27TgLW6pCU?t=220 https://youtu.be/O27TgLW6pCU?t=220 Another analogy: I find the flat enunciation of "voice to text" on my phone a bit difficult to follow. I can understand if I pay attention, but I can't passively listen and multitask like I can with human read text (@see - The Guardian's "The Long Read" podcast).
- Tor3 4y ago
  I can read only a limited number of kanji (or rather, words written with kanji), but even that makes reading much easier. Books for small children are written in Hiragana, with spaces, and in theory that should be as easy to read as English.. after all, it's easy to learn Hiragana, anyone can do that in a short time, and with practice you can learn to read it fast. But it's still tricky to read all-Hiragana sentences, even with spaces. Not sure I can explain why, more than the usual (and true) argument about the particularly large number of homonyms in Japanese. It's more than that. It's just much faster and easier to read 私 than わたし
  - kibwen 4y ago
    It's interesting to consider that Japanese's relatively low number of discrete phonemes might result in a relatively high number of homophones, but if a preponderance of homophones is the problem, wouldn't listening to spoken Japanese be just as hard as reading hiragana?

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detrites 4y ago

> outside of very limited contexts, furigana Sarcasm aside, I only take issue with this. The context here is learning Japanese, ie a beginner. A typical way to do that with any language is to use the enormous wealth of resources aimed at either kids or learners. Including in this case many popular manga. It's a context within which, of course, Furigana is widely available, as it's one of the ways Japanese themselves learn Kanji. And I would guess probably why it even exists, though I'm sure you could correct me on that. Your view of Japanese seems to be from a very high level, encompassing its totality or close to it. At that level your assertions may be correct and relevant, but that's not where my comments, nor the OP with their post, are aiming.

ickoonite 4y ago
OK, but you’re moving the goalposts. A written form of the language curated specifically for the purpose of learning is not really relevant to a discussion of the language, just as would be the case for any other language. That is not the language used in daily life. There are no furigana in a newspaper or on the Internet (technological assistance notwithstanding). Magazines, business communication…anything useful is off limits if you can’t read, say, 500 kanji at an absolute minimum. Anything more advanced, academia, etc. requires far more.
- detrites 4y ago
  You think the goalposts have been "moved" because you've misinterpreted the context of this discussion. The original post we are all commenting on is an introduction to some basic concepts of Japanese, aimed at programmers. After learning several languages to a basic conversational level, Japanese was by far the most logical, simple, and had the least "gotcha's" or exceptions. On the whole it was a breath of fresh air compared to others. My comments regarding the relative ease Japanese can be learned to a basic, useful level versus same attempted in other languages stand. Attempts to reframe them as regarding a level of complete mastery won't alter that.

kibwen 4y ago

Can you explain why a stream of hiragana would be unreadable? It's a phonetic alphabet, right? Shouldn't it be just as readable as the phonetic alphabet for any other language?

ickoonite 4y ago
becauseitsbasicallylikewritinglikethissoquitehardtoparse
matgessel 4y ago
It's difficult to skim the stream of symbols and instantly recognize concepts. Think of a word finding box puzzle in English (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=word+finding+puzzle&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=word+finding+puzzle&iax=images&ia=...). It helps if you add spaces and periods, but I still think kanji make it easier to quickly pick out concepts. In this video, Yuta compares different ways of writing the same sentence and discusses efforts to eliminate Kanji: "Why Do Japanese Still Use Kanji?" • https://youtu.be/O27TgLW6pCU?t=220 https://youtu.be/O27TgLW6pCU?t=220 Another analogy: I find the flat enunciation of "voice to text" on my phone a bit difficult to follow. I can understand if I pay attention, but I can't passively listen and multitask like I can with human read text (@see - The Guardian's "The Long Read" podcast).
Tor3 4y ago
I can read only a limited number of kanji (or rather, words written with kanji), but even that makes reading much easier. Books for small children are written in Hiragana, with spaces, and in theory that should be as easy to read as English.. after all, it's easy to learn Hiragana, anyone can do that in a short time, and with practice you can learn to read it fast. But it's still tricky to read all-Hiragana sentences, even with spaces. Not sure I can explain why, more than the usual (and true) argument about the particularly large number of homonyms in Japanese. It's more than that. It's just much faster and easier to read 私 than わたし
- kibwen 4y ago
  It's interesting to consider that Japanese's relatively low number of discrete phonemes might result in a relatively high number of homophones, but if a preponderance of homophones is the problem, wouldn't listening to spoken Japanese be just as hard as reading hiragana?