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Someone literate in English would also need a dictionary just as much to read academic, esoteric, or old words from a museum. They might be able to guess the me
by plagiarist 3y ago
Someone literate in English would also need a dictionary just as much to read academic, esoteric, or old words from a museum. They might be able to guess the meaning based on word roots and context, but I assume someone literate with kanji could do the same based on radicals and context.
I think their claim is still defensible, and I think to make a fair argument you'd have to reduce the scope of kanji down to something the size of APL's vocabulary in any counterclaim.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> Someone literate in English would also need a dictionary just as much to read academic, esoteric, or old words from a museum. This is plainly untrue; if you go to a museum and they're displaying an astrolabe, you can read the word "astrolabe" despite the fact that you've never learned it. In Japanese and Chinese, this is not true,† and the text describing the exhibit must separately inform you of how the word is pronounced. Similarly, if you look over your Chinese medical record, it will be full of unfamiliar characters that you need to look up by shape if you want to read them. An English speaker may not know what a biopsy is, but they won't have trouble reading the word. † It might be true; I have not looked into "astrolabe" specifically. But for various premodern devices, it is not true.