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This is insane. Just finding a single character must be a real challenge. What is the character ordering on these cylinders? I counted about 40 characters per

by 404mm 2y ago

This is insane. Just finding a single character must be a real challenge. What is the character ordering on these cylinders? I counted about 40 characters per row, and I’m guessing about 40 rows around the cylinder (1/4 of a cylinder is around 10 rows). So that’s about 1,600 characters. How does this typewriter score for usability? In Kanji, ~1000 characters mean basic literacy, and 2000-2500 characters is “newspaper level” literacy. I still cannot wrap my mind around mastering the written form of this language.

macleginn 2y ago
They are ordered based on the readings: https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2021/04/typewriter-three-languages/ https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2021/04/typewriter-three-lang...
fatbird 2y ago
Apparently 1,172 characters on that machine. No mention I could find of composability of characters, which is possible in theory (many characters are combinations of simpler characters, but combining them alters the representation, shrinking the component characters/substituting slightly different marks). Something else I didn't see mention of: can you easily switch the cylinder or the rows to get different character sets? I can imagine a business making due with ~1,000 characters because their subject matter is narrower than a newspaper would generally need.
anigbrowl 2y ago
Kanji (which derive from Chinese characters) are indexed based on the on-yomi reading which approximately matches the Chinese sound - albeit as understood several centuries ago. The index can be ordered on gojuon ('fifty sounds') or Iroha, a Japanese poem which contains all syllabic sounds of the Japanese language exactly once. This is more likely as Iroha was the standard ordering for centuries and continues to be used today in many contexts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroha Japanese is hard to read and write, but you can do it with practice. Complex kanji are not unlike complex words whose spelling you can learn through chunking. There are ~214 bushu, aka 'radicals', fairly simple characters from which all more complicated characters are made. In practice you only need to know about half of them unless you plan on being a hardcore language scholar, the others are rare. Once you get used to this, complex kanji are not arbitrary pictograms of 5-30 unique strokes, but small arrays of 2-4 bushu which are combined and written according to a small (8,8) set of rules. I think this is way more useful than the mnemonic approach used in many popular books. In short, if you want to learn written Japanese (or Chinese/Chinese adjacent languages), learn the radicals early on. You can find Anki decks to help and mastering 214 of them is reasonably easy. Also, write. Nothing improves your recognition/retention like writing them regularly with a pen or a brush. Write them on your hand. Write them in the air.
userbinator 2y ago
I suspect you'd memorise at least the common ones with enough practice. After all, there are people who have memorised a significant fraction of what could be considered equivalent to Unicode codepoints: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_telegraph_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_telegraph_code

by 404mm 2y ago

macleginn 2y ago

They are ordered based on the readings: https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2021/04/typewriter-three-languages/ https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2021/04/typewriter-three-lang...

fatbird 2y ago

Apparently 1,172 characters on that machine. No mention I could find of composability of characters, which is possible in theory (many characters are combinations of simpler characters, but combining them alters the representation, shrinking the component characters/substituting slightly different marks). Something else I didn't see mention of: can you easily switch the cylinder or the rows to get different character sets? I can imagine a business making due with ~1,000 characters because their subject matter is narrower than a newspaper would generally need.

anigbrowl 2y ago

Kanji (which derive from Chinese characters) are indexed based on the on-yomi reading which approximately matches the Chinese sound - albeit as understood several centuries ago. The index can be ordered on gojuon ('fifty sounds') or Iroha, a Japanese poem which contains all syllabic sounds of the Japanese language exactly once. This is more likely as Iroha was the standard ordering for centuries and continues to be used today in many contexts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroha Japanese is hard to read and write, but you can do it with practice. Complex kanji are not unlike complex words whose spelling you can learn through chunking. There are ~214 bushu, aka 'radicals', fairly simple characters from which all more complicated characters are made. In practice you only need to know about half of them unless you plan on being a hardcore language scholar, the others are rare. Once you get used to this, complex kanji are not arbitrary pictograms of 5-30 unique strokes, but small arrays of 2-4 bushu which are combined and written according to a small (8,8) set of rules. I think this is way more useful than the mnemonic approach used in many popular books. In short, if you want to learn written Japanese (or Chinese/Chinese adjacent languages), learn the radicals early on. You can find Anki decks to help and mastering 214 of them is reasonably easy. Also, write. Nothing improves your recognition/retention like writing them regularly with a pen or a brush. Write them on your hand. Write them in the air.

userbinator 2y ago

I suspect you'd memorise at least the common ones with enough practice. After all, there are people who have memorised a significant fraction of what could be considered equivalent to Unicode codepoints: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_telegraph_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_telegraph_code