/jp/ - Otaku Culture

I forgot to mention my point:

Are the Japanese too proud to admit their written system is outright horrible?

No, they're too hellbent on tradition and "the proper way" to abolish kanji. There's just something about Japan that resists change in all forms.

Seriously, I'm Chinese and I think it's retarded in any other language except Chinese.

I really don't think they give a shit.

>and the reason I'm bitching is not because I think Japanese is a difficult language to learn.

Bullshit. Cry moar, faggot. Japanese doesn't need spaces.

But........ it looks so cool though. I can't think of any other writing system that just looks so awesome. And anyways, don't focus too much on learning Kanji readings individually. Learn kanji compounds as vocabulary words, because that's the way they are used. 日本 means Japan, not Sun-Book.

Kanji has different readings because of what they were attributed to in the past, native/chinese readings, and sometimes just plain synonymous words. They could do away with the entire system though, I don't know why they won't.

Katakana isn't really that much of a nuisance, just a small extra. Consider this: many scripts work fine without lowercase/uppercase, there's really no reason for our Roman alphabet to have both.

東方

>>1879363
日本 can also mean origin of the sun

But it does open up scads of poetic and just plain punny uses once you have basic competence. And, there's no way the Japanese would discard something that makes them relatively unique.

>the reason I'm bitching is not because I think Japanese is a difficult language to learn.
Yeah right. If you didn't think it was difficult you wouldn't even be complaining about it in the first place. gb2/lang/

The only reason it's hard for an non native speaker is because Japanese and English have different roots and rules.

>>1879314
Why would they abolish kanji? Are you trying to ruin everything?
ははははいしゃです。

Read that, bitch.

>>1879379
Fuck you cunt.

>>1879362
Yes, it does. Sometimes the particles in between words could be the start of the word right next to it.

confusing or me and Japanese children.

>>1879392
Listen cunt. I fully understood what you said there (my mother is a dentist) - but if they'd use spaces too there would be no need for kanji.

What's with this Smash faggot? It's like Sax all over again.

Might as well bitch on how english has the most fucked up phonetics ever.

>>1879397
SON?!

>>1879376
Nippon = land of the rising sun

If they learned to make spaces, their economy would be boosted by 200%, minimum. No exaggeration, 100% truth. Foolish slant eyes!

>>1879401
>>1879397
>>1879392
>>1879362
People, spacing in Japanese was considered during the Meiji reforms, but was ruled out because Japanese scholars took into consideration Japanese's highly agglutinative nature. At around classical times, prior to borrowing vocab from Chinese, the definition of a "word", "phrase" or even "sentence" was not clear. It was considered that each meaningful syllable added to the meaning of the entire structure, and in effect, an entire sentence can be considered a single word. Because of this it was considered ungrammatical to put in spaces. Furthermore, spaces are not necessary in Japanese, even without kanji. Many unspaced documents have been written solely with kana from around the 4th century to the Edo era, and was in fact more popular at times because not as many people could read kanji.

Of course, modern Japanese is punctuated throughout with Chinese vocabulary, and too be quite honest they could simply INVENT a spacing rule, like Korea and Vietnam.

To illustratte, Korean faces a similar problem, having a slightly higher number of Chinese borrowings. You would imagine they would have a hard time reading from unspaced hangul alone, but as is the case with kana, Korean documents have occasionally been written in full hangul throughout history with no comprehensible problems. It was not until the 30s that mixed hangul/hanja scrips with abolished and spaces were put in by the reformists.

The bottom line is that there's no reason to use logographic characters from an analytic language in a synthetic one, it's inefficient and simply a waste of time. Spacing is a minor issue they could do with or without.

Read the bottom of:

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/kanji.html

Not sure how accurate it is but it makes sense.

>>1879436

>>1879392
Your mother being a dentist has nothing to do with this conversation.

>>1879582
Don't care about the facts here lol
We just say things out of thinly veiled political tensions and national pride

I bet half the guys in here don't even know what you're talking about

>>1879582
The biggest argument I've heard is that the language has so many damned homophones.

This in itself might not end up being as serious a problem as it's made out to be, except in the case of legal documents, where you want to be as specific as possible. Which is tough to do when any one group of kana could be between 5 to 20 different words.

>>1879436

second

Katakana was never intended to be used exclusively for cognates. It just kind of filled that niche after a while.

Personally I don't Kanji all that hard to understand.

難しいから、あなたは日本語毎日勉強してください。

Or else you'll complain that it's hard or confusing, as opposed to manning up and learning something's value for what it is.

>>1880325
Value?! Op obvious wants to learn a language overnight in order to read porn games. What other value is there!?

>>1879297
the reason the Japs keep kanji is the same reson English keeps it's fucked up spelling, a mix or tradition and stubborn speakers

I fail to see why people have so much trouble with katakana.

>>1880385

They do? It seems pretty simple to me. I only hear people complaining about kanji.

>>1880348

かわいい日本の女の人で話せるからか。

Duh

>>1880397
I don't know, OP whines about katakana too in his post, but it's not the first time I've seen people complaining about it.

>>1880397

I've found that Kanji actually make things quite easier to understand when reading.

Example:

The word あつい　(atsui) can mean hot, thick, or passionate.

おんなのひとはあついです。

Could possibly mean the woman is thick, or the woman is passionate.

However, 女の人は熱いです translates into the woman is passionate (if you know the kanji).

>>1880424
im not sure but that kanji is indeed for hot, but as in high temperature. i don't know if there's a kanji for hot as in "that girl's smoking hot, brah"

>>1880443

It's slang. Not widely used that I know of. Just an example...

The point remains, either shit or get off the pot. Learn to deal with the language's particulars or go on to something easier.

>>1880398

可愛い日本女性と話せるからです。

idiot

>>1880443
ℳℴℯ❤

>>1880453

This.

Stop bitching OP, they won't change it for you to make it easier.

>>1880462

I believe:

かわいい日本女で話せるからか。

was closer to what anon wanted to say.

(Nice constructive criticism btw)

>>1880482

that hurts my eyes

The Japanese don't think what lazy gaijin weeaboos think about their writing system.
They're perfectly happy with it and the advantages and disadvantages it brings.

The kanji system does seem a bit impractical when you've just got started with it, but you can get seriously used to it, assuming you practice enough.

Personally, I cannot think of writing or reading Japanese without kanji. It can seriously make it more comfortable once you grasp it.

>>1880462

ftw, but is 性 needed there?

>>1880524
It's literally "woman" as opposed to 女の人。

>>1880524

女　alone doesn't work.

女女女

newbie question from a first year:

>>1880524
What the hell is that kanji and what does it mean?

>>1880532
I thought onna no hito was woman?

What's the difference culturally? Is one used more than the other?

English is supposed to be one of the more harder if not the hardest language to learn because there are so many, "exceptions." Besides the Japanese have no problem teaching their language, and using it themselves. Why should they care if you can't learn it or not?

>>1880524
"じょせい" "josei" "女性"

>>1880546
女性　（じょせい） Is sort of like the difference from "her" to "that woman." The meaning is virtually the same, but 女性 is just a bit more formal. You'll often see it on forms or other documents with 男性（だんせい） for Male /Female.

>>1880546

女の人 is woman. So is 女性。　女 is nothing alone and used with other kanji for compounds that have to do with women, girls, etc. 性 in this case is like the sex, so the person's sex is female. It's probably more based on preference, 女の人 just feels more elementary to me. 日本の女の人　is quite longer than 日本女性 and I hate having a lot of の's.

Kanji compounds are fun.

>>1880561
thanks

>>1880568
thanks

>>1879297
it's definately easier to use the kanji here than writing nippon no onna no hito out in hirigana. Just saying....

(btw, where do I get the japanese fonts?)

>>1880541
Doin it wrong

>>1880568
>女 is nothing alone

>>1880568
Wrong. 女 alone means woman, or just female in general. Maybe 女の人is more formal, but they both have the same basic meaning.

>>1880620

Of course every kanji has a meaning by itself otherwise it wouldn't make any sense, but how often do you see it as such?

>>1880568 女の人 is woman. So is 女性.
No. 女の人 is woman; 女性 is female.
The distinction is important.

>>1880630
A lot.

>>1880636

So then is >>1880462 correct, or should 女の人　have been used?

>>1880630
I actually almost never see 'onna no hito', as opposed to just plain 'onna'. (That said, my sampling is biased towards what I have encountered in manga and at futaba, so it can't be said to be proper Japanese.)

>>1880636
>女の人 is woman; 女性 is female.
They're used pretty much interchangeably in Japanese. In English, you wouldn't say "I'm going to talk to that female over there"

Japanese is only hard if:
1. You're lazy
2. You're stupid because you inherited shit genes

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/about
If a nigger can do it there's no reason why you can't, just get your ass off /jp/ and start doing something about it.

>>1880636

Important to who? You?

>>1880650
Manga and futaba is "proper" Japanese. It may be slangy, but if Japanese people use it, it's "proper Japanese". A lot more real than anything you'll find in textbooks anyway

>>1880640

I can see the uses for it being alone, but it is far more common to see it used with something else.

>>1880666

But technically you can say that in English and some people might think it's weird. However, it all depends on the person. A lot of things are interchangeable in any language.

>>1880655
Right; basically a distinction that is only necessary when talking about cross-dressers and hermaphrodites.
Do you see why we need such linguistic clarity on /jp/?

>>1880659
>a nigger can do it [...] you can't
Stop lowering my self-esteem.

>>1880666
I think it's better phrased as "media is colloquial Japanese and therefore spoken, common Japanese" as opposed to the rigid Tokyo based writing we learn in classes. Four years of classroom Japanese will get you around, but still don't contain most day to day shit, sayings, etc, much to my chagrin upon visiting. Four years of classroom Spanish and I was rockin' the language. Then again I had a lot more practice here in the south compared to Japanese...

>>1879363
thats great

guess you're pretty fucked if you see a compound you havent memorized aren't you. At least if you know the readings/meanings you have a pretty good shot of it.

If you only memorize compounds and not readings/meanings of individual kanji you are only fucking yourself over in the long run

>>1880709
>>If you only memorize compounds and not readings/meanings of individual kanji you are only fucking yourself over in the long run

Hence why Heisig sponsors are all trolls.

For me, a lot of the meanings work back and forth between mandarin and japanese, since y'know, a lot of the shit is borrowed. Plus sentence structure and little phrases, you see the same things in both languages in terms of colloquial phrasing of accents often.

Don't feel bad. Even some Japanese hate kanji.

It always comes up in language threads, but it bears repetition: English as a second language is probably a lot harder than picking up Japanese.

http://www.hep.wisc.edu/~jnb/charivarius.html

This thread is an eyesore

silly japanese don't know how to make a logical language like their neighbouring koreans

>>1880712
There's a difference between learning how to write/recognize individual kanji (quite important) with an efficient method and drilling obscure readings for every kanji you find instead of words (stupid).

Wow, at first I thought I had a low Japanese studying powerlevel compared to some people on /jp/. This thread was a huge confidence booster, thanks guys.

>>1880784

fuck, I'd need to break out the OED to be able to adequately read that poem aloud