what do japanese players type on?

[Zaptruder]

Originally posted by TMPikachu
I know what context you put it in, I exaggerated it.

The problem with internet talkin' is that you can't really get the right tone on things.

Though personaly, I see the future coming up in Wulongs. (by future, I mean like a generation+ after mine)

What purpose does exaggerating my statement hold anyway? In erroneously emphasizing on some point, undermining my argument? :p

Anyway, I don't know what wulongs are, but I'm still awaiting replies from people more knowledgable in japanese then I am (i.e. any of the guys that made a reply to my original pre rant mode post).

Actually just went back and read Seeker_Onos' rather informative post...

Just to add to the whole language deal - english and japanese may share more in common then you suspect in terms of their pictography - it's actually even more complicated in english - while in general we use a discernable set of rules to generate the sound of the word - some words and their spellings have to be learned by rote - their appearance alone (the unique combination of upper, lower case letters and letter shapes almost combine into one item - even tho we easily break them into discrete letters) triggers their correct learnt meaning and sound. A word like Yacht - sounds nothing like the way it's spelt - we learn by way of pictography.
Phoneme representations of words and pictograph representation of words are both valid ways of presenting a language. But at least in the case of english; words that follow the general phoneme rules are much more efficiently learnt and accessed by the brain, then exception/pictographic words like yacht.

[Seeker_Onos]

Originally posted by Zaptruder


As for the culture of the japanese written language, the truth is they have one of the younger writing systems around - where most written languages that exist have some sort of root in the BC era, the Japanese only acquired their writing system in its modernish form in the last 2 thousand years - by importing chinese characters and jamming them into their speaking system. Over the next few hundred years - their writing system was changed to better suit their needs; the kanji used for hiragana, simplified, and katakana been introduced later - with both letter sets going through multiple revisions to approach the appearance they now possess. It wouldn't be out of the question to add to the culture of their written language by completely discarding the remnants of the chinese imports in favour of a purely alphabetical system that is far simpler to learn, for all concerned....

...This is what I know about languages with relation to the japanese written language; it's likely that I'm probably just too uninformed about the subtle nuances of the language and languages in general to understand why kanji *is* a good writing system, but IMO, the points I've presented provide a pretty solid case against.

If this helps, I initially found reading Japanese diificult because of the lack of spaces... but after further study, there is a logical reason and pattern for it.

For Example: (I'm hoping that you are viewing this with Japanese encoding ) ()

–l‚Ì”L‚̓|ƒbƒL‚ð?H‚ׂ܂µ‚½?B Boku no neko wa Pocky o tabemasita.

"My cat ate Pocky".

Japanese uses particles like ‚Í?A‚Ì and ‚ð among many others to form grammatical connections - and breaks - between words. As you learn the Kana, particularly Hiragana, you can pick up where these particles are and then "see" the words formed by Kanji or other Kana.


More not-necessarily useful language trivia (funny what I spent my college loan money on) :

As for the Japanese writing system being "imported" in from Chinese and then simplified to meet the practical and cultural needs of the Japanese, we have done the same with the Latin alphabet as much as the Slavic peoples did with the Cyrillic alphabet.

The denizens of the British Isles took the Roman letters wholesale and adapted them into English, with a few minor adjustments that have come and gone over the centuries (such as the Icelandic "eth" - the "D" with a line through it) ...

German did likewise, discarding the dozen-and-half Rune Letters (the FUTHARK alphabet) in favor of the Latin alphabet because it gave greater flexibility to the written German of the time, as well as Latin being the dominant language of Western Europe at the time.

These events occured over several centuries (mid 700's to 900's) and after the Yamato had established themselves as the dominant tribe in Japan (600-400 BCE) along with the introduction of Chinese hanzi (ideograms/letters) around the 500's. The first Japanese books/novels - Kojiki and Nihon Shoki appeared around then, well predating most Western literature (the Greek and Latin texts of the Christian scriptures, and Hebrew scriptures that survived in the monastic or synagogue collections being a notable exception).

Of course, the eldest written languages - the brand of Sanskrit from the Indus Valley (evolved into Hindi and a mix of other Indic languages), Sumerian/Akkadian (evolved into the precursor languages for Hebrew, Farsi and Arabic) from Mesopotamia, Phoenician (from whence the Cypriotic, Trojan, Cathargian and Philistine languages derive) and possibly Egyptian, if you wish to consider the heiroglyphics as an alphabet... have mostly vanished from use today. Chinese - and its characters - is the only living language that can truly claim to reach back in some form or another to the dawn of written history.

[Zaptruder]

Mind you, I think english is a pretty flawed language as well - but it's somewhat more consistent then japanese in terms of phoneme correct words (i.e. they're more of them), and pictographic words are broken down into letters anyway (unlike kanji).

But I can understand the lack of spaces - the particles and kanji break up sentences - thus obviating the need of spaces. But I propose you remove all kanji - and put spaces in there.

A phoneme correct language may very well have pleasant side effects including higher literacy rates (compared to before), as well as been just less confusing in general.

For english, we only have a fixed number of phonemes - somewhere in the region of 50-60; if we actually used unique letters for each phoneme sound, we'd bypass the need to have complicated spelling rules everywhere.

In the end, changing the rules of a language in such drastic fashion is definetly more trouble then its worth - for those changing them - but in the long run, it would help.

[Seeker_Onos]

I can't say this with authority, but I think that Japan has a 99% literacy rate - as compared to our literacy rate at around 85%.

As for the Japanese, I tend to think that they are quite content with their mother tongue, and to alter it would not only tamper with what cultural uniqueness it has, but would ultimately be more burdensome on the learners.

While there are tons more phonemes and homophones in Japanese, the Kanji helps preserve the unique meaning of each homophone without having to use different tonal inflections (as English does) or having to derive it from context (in the written language).

[TMPikachu]

There is NO way in America we have a literacy rate under 99% for the adult population.

[tracert]

Originally posted by TMPikachu
There is NO way in America we have a literacy rate under 99% for the adult population.

i just looked it up in 2000 the rate was 99% for america

[Zaptruder]

Originally posted by Seeker_Onos
I can't say this with authority, but I think that Japan has a 99% literacy rate - as compared to our literacy rate at around 85%.

As for the Japanese, I tend to think that they are quite content with their mother tongue, and to alter it would not only tamper with what cultural uniqueness it has, but would ultimately be more burdensome on the learners.

While there are tons more phonemes and homophones in Japanese, the Kanji helps preserve the unique meaning of each homophone without having to use different tonal inflections (as English does) or having to derive it from context (in the written language).

The literacy rate has little to do with the language difficulty... but rather the state of the education system and the availabilty of education.

In japan, the general state of education (at least the availability) seems very good, while america... while education is mandatory, alot of schools are basically shambles there.

Regardless, I'm not doubting that the japanese (as a majority) prefer what they're already used to but that if they dropped kanji and implemented spaces, it would actually be better for them.

and a homophone isn't really a homophone when you change the tonal inflection (see chinese) - but there still exists many true homophones in the english language - with same spelling, but different meanings that work perfectly well.

With kanji, while the meaning is preserved (to an extent), the sound isn't - if you get 10 japanese adults to read newspaper headlines (often all in kanji), you're likely to recieve 10 different readings of the kanji. Now that's just plain confusing.

[bside]

Originally posted by Zaptruder
Regardless, I'm not doubting that the japanese (as a majority) prefer what they're already used to but that if they dropped kanji and implemented spaces, it would actually be better for them.

it's not a matter of preference, nor the thing of "better or worse." getting rid of Kanji from Japanese involves the whole new degree of change.

GHQ back when WWII was over once tried to get Kanji out of Japanese. they even suggested that alphabets should be used. at the same time, even within Japan there was a move to remove Kanji out of Japanese, but none of such was done. simply explaining, Kanji's were too deeply "built-in" and couldn't be removed. (the whole history behind this is really long to explain, so i'll just stay away from that for now.)

i do understand that u r talking about this at a degree of "better or worse," but when things involve consequential changes, those changes themselves must be considered.

Originally posted by Zaptruder
With kanji, while the meaning is preserved (to an extent), the sound isn't - if you get 10 japanese adults to read newspaper headlines (often all in kanji), you're likely to recieve 10 different readings of the kanji. Now that's just plain confusing.

wrong. that could happen when we r dealing w/ ppl's names, as the Kanji's for names don't have to follow the rules of pronounciations. thus, anything that should be pronounced as "a" can be registered (under the official family registration system that Japan uses) as "b" as far as pronounciations r concerned. yet, it's rare and even when that's done, they usually choose the ones that r similar in sounds.

however, as in ur example of news headlines, or any other things other than the exception of ppl's names, we all pronounce them in the same way.

for instance, one of the today's news headlines at msn.co.jp is;

訪æœ?å•?題：「行ã??ã?ªã‚‰é¦–相自身ã€?　政府矋

like u said, it's mostly Kanji, but this sentense has only one way to read (spaced for better Romaji readability);

houchou mondai: 「ikunara shushou jisin� seifu suji

if u ask 10 Japanese adults to read this aloud, all of them will be the same.

yet, it's true that when only 首 is there to read (for the sake of example), this would be read as "kubi," not "shu." in other words, depending on how they r used, they could be read differently, but not like u said. this is a part of the language and we all know how to properly read them, and pronounciations r set for each and all Kanji's.

EDIT: the last Kanji letter in the headline is corrupt. yet the original headline has the Kanji at the end that can only be pronouced as "suji" when attached after "政府"

[bside]

Originally posted by TMPikachu
There is NO way in America we have a literacy rate under 99% for the adult population.

just came across an interesting info, so let's share it.

according to the CIA's World Factbook (yes, Central Intelligence Agency, not Culinary Institute of America), the literacy rate for US is 97%, not 99, where the definition is "age 15 and over can read and write."

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/...k/geos/us.html