/jp/ - Otaku Culture

I've been wondering. Are there any good logical reasons to have two different case systems, which both cover the exact same letters? I'm talking about lower case and upper case, ofcourse.

Do the english have any plan to just stick to either one?

Theres so many words that are pronounced the same but are actually different, foreign words would be a bitch otherwise, they stick to the old ways, etc.

>>4976291

>>4976291
0/10

Horrible analogy. Better would be cursive vs. blocktext.

>>4976292
this, basically

>>4976291
howTheHellWouldExpertProgrammersBeAbleToProperlyNameTheirVariablesWithoutTwoDifferentCases

>>4976323
On this note, would there be any case in Japanese where if you don't spell something in katakana, you would look uneducated? I just have a feeling that I wouldn't find a quick answer on Google.

I don't mind that they have two syllable systems, they just need to get rid of that retarded kanji alphabet.

>>4976363

1/10

>>4976338
try_naming_with_underscores

>>4976391
WhatAboutClasses

>>4976414
c_classname_goes_here

>>4976489
CONSTANTS

$dollarsignvariables are best variables.

>>4976340
Foreign words (Engrish is ALWAYS written in Katakana) and slang/shortened words.

>>4976291
Thread over.

サーセンwwwww

>>4976764
Except lower- and uppercase letters actually serve a purpose.

>>4976786
And both hiragana and katakana serve a purpose. What's your point?

>>4976323
Except people actually use capital letters.

>>4976786
No they don't. Ancient Greeks and Romans used to write everything in all caps and without spaces- scratch that, lowercase was invented after Alexander the Great's death do the newfags could learn the language easier.

YOUAREAGIGANTICFAGGOT

>>4976825
Uppercase characters serve to indicate the start of a sentence, or a name, etc.

Katakana or hiragana are not used like that. Either one is used exclusively, i.e. they add nothing of value to one another.

Katakana is for loan words and sound effects. It's almost like a kanji replacement for foreign words. If it was all hiragana you'd have trouble knowing where the particles end and start.

Hiragana is used for word ending and tenses, and particles.

They're both very useful.

>>4976363
For a foreigner, kanji is one of the worst in terms of learning. But to someone fluent in Japanese, kanji is necessary to shorten sentences, and easier to understand the meanings of words they don't know because of of the kanji itself.

So no they don't.

Katakana is ridiculously fucking useful, the only people who ever bring this up are people who can't read Japanese.

ITT: people who are really bitter about being horrible at Japanese.

>>4978744
True. And it only takes like a day to learn. Why anyone would bitch about it is beyond me.

>>4978747
Don't forget the Expert Programmers, or I'll have to forced indentation.

They could do away with all of them and have a single, optimized, clear system if they just started writing in romanji. I don't see why they can't. They already need to learn all the characters of the alphabet anyway, so why can't they start writing in it? It is a much more efficient and, by now, proven well-designed system than their archaic "a character for every word" approach.

>>4976283
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Let's say you take things slow. You have time. You also drool like a faucet. Two weeks, max.


You have both syllabic alphabets memorized. Good job. Just remember that your language is inferior and will always be written, along with such things as fart noises, in the alphabet that looks like chicken scratches.

>>4979414
I'll bite on the troll.

If you ever, ever try to translate something like Konjaku Monogatari, which was written entirely in katakana (effectively the same as your "I don't want to learn new alphabets" pussy shit), you will find out exactly how much you need those kanji. It makes reading far, far more effective and efficient. Downside, you have to actually know the language and do a bit more studying than watching Naruto in a non-stop marathon.

>>4979444
Which is why it also helps in reading and comprehending quickly.
Since the number of sounds in Japanese is limited, Kanji is used to allow people to read more quickly by making the intended concept transparent.

google on why Japanese can't be simplified like Korean was, and I'm sure you will find plenty of evidence.

>>4979444
Nice strawman. Learning the 26 characters of the alphabet is totally comparable to learning the thousands of characters that make up Kanji.

>>4979494
I never made that comparison. I compared reading in katakana (44 letters, all of which are easily and 100% equivalently translated into Roman characters) alone equivalent to reading in romanji (26 characters you already know). If 44 characters fry your brain, stop learning Japanese now.

>>4979414
>bawwww I'm too stupid to learn Japanese

>>4979494
If you are talking about how this argument relates to the OP, that is obvious. katakana's real use is to show that something is different about a word. Loanwords, Onomatopoeia, words you don't know the kanji for, etc all fall under this.
You don't 'need' it, but it makes reading more efficient.
As for replacing everything with romaji? (or hiragana / katakana, same argument) It also makes reading more efficient. The number of homophones in Japanese is also larger than English, so you would have to deal with many of those a certain way.

Have you ever tried to read a large amount of text in only hiragana/katakana/romaji? When you are reading anything above simple grammar or a very specific context it takes more thought than most people think.

I'll take kanji over English spelling, by the way.
Not that Japanese makes any more sense than English anyway.

According to Tae Kim under "Why Kanji?":
"Since you want to read at a much faster rate than you talk, you need some visual cues to instantly tell you what each word is. You can use the shape of words in English to blaze through text because most words have different shapes. Try this little exercise: Hi, enve thgouh all teh wrods aer seplled icorrenctly, can you sltil udsternand me?" Korean does this too because it has enough characters to make words with distinct and different shapes. However, because the visual cues are not distinct as Kanji, spaces needed to be added to remove ambiguities. (This presents another problem of when and where to set spaces.)"

>>4979561
>I'm learning Japanese because it makes me look smart

>>4979494

A bunch of them are mashups of other characters. You're bound to see patterns.

>>4979612

Another note about kanji. Even if you forget the pronunciation of something while reading it, you can quickly and easily grasp its meaning by the shape and order. It helps if characters have different pronunciations in different situations. 今　can be pronounced differently if it's paired with something different. 今年　Fuck if I know the correct pronunciation of that, but I know the meaning of the two separately and can make up something. "Now" + "year" = "this year".

>Hi, enve thgouh all teh wrods aer seplled icorrenctly, can you sltil udsternand me?
what the fuck did you just say, I'll kill you you bastard!

>>4979675
Most of these arguments would never be posted if people realized that language doesn't usually change so other people can learn it more easily, unless the natives are having trouble with it.
It only changes for the natives to use it more efficiently.

let's think of all the ways we could make English easier to learn for non-natives.

>>4979620
>bawww life is so unfair for us stupid people

>>4979728
I can't even respond to this. It's just too fucking easy.

>>4979747
Irony?

>>4979747
>bawwwwwwww someone should make Japanese easier for me to learn! I'm so lazy I'm going to insult other people who already know it and complain about the system! BAAAAAAAAAAW.
You must be black with an entitlement and inferiority complex that large.

>>4976825
Upper case and lower case *do* serve a purpose, they clarify the language when written. it's all the same letters, not an entirely different alphabet. It'd be like if we used both Roman and Crylli alphabets.
>>4976789
But they serve the same purpose.

>>4980216
hurr

>>4980237
>I don't have a logical arguement so I'm going to call everyone who I pointlessly disagree with stupid

>>4980245
>Your argument is so nonsensical I'll just dismiss you as a troll.

Corrected.

>Are there any good logical reasons to have two different syllable systems, which both cover the exact same syllables? I'm talking about hiragana and katakana, ofcourse.

It makes it easier to read.

Don't believe me? Learn Japanese yourself and try it. Don't know Japanese? Then just trust the people who do.

THREAD IS OVER.

>>4979414
>a single, optimized, clear system if they just started writing in romanji. I don't see why they can't.
If you actually tried to learn Japanese seriously, you would realize this would not work. Kanji, hiragana, and katakana are all needed. Especially kanji.

>>4980275
What makes what easy to read?

>>4980259
>implying he's not a troll

>>4980216
>But they serve the same purpose.
No they don't.

>>4980280
>What makes what easy to read?
The magic of the moon runes only reveals itself to those who have learned its secrets.

>>4980280
>Upper case and lower case *do* serve a purpose, they clarify the language when written.

Katakana serves just as much (if not more) of a purpose.
Think of all the situations where capitalization actually clarifies the reading.
Names, or nouns that can stand for different things. white or White? black or Black?

too bad I'm responding to a troll post.

>>4980276
So you really can't give a good argument why it is needed without resorting to "you just don't know why because you haven't learned the language" copouts?

Hint: we haven't learned the language because it is dumb.

>>4981614
What part of "it is fuck hard to read extensive text in only romaji or hiragana" do you not understand? (Actually even just a sentence or two of romaji is an eyesore). This is a fact. If you aren't going to take the word of nearly everyone who has learned Japanese then the only way to convince you is for you to learn the language yourself and then attempt to read stuff without kanji.

Is it absolutely essential to have both lower and upper case letters? No, but English would be a bit harder to read without them. Same goes for Japanese, one of the syllabaries could be removed but it would make sentences a bit more ambiguous and thus harder to read.

And written Japanese would be miserable to read without kanji.

>>4981614
thissentencewithnopunctuationorspacesorcapitallettersisaboutonehundredtimeseasiertoreadthanjapanesew
ithoutkanji

はしのはしではしではしてたべます。
"I eat at the edge of a bridge while running." Without kanji, you wouldn't have a fucking clue what I was talking about. Or at least, you'd have to spend about 5 minutes looking up all the potential kanji and meanings for "hashi."

>>4982023
D'oh.
"I eat at the edge of a bridge with chopsticks while running."

>>4981614
>Hint: we haven't learned the language because it is dumb.
>Translation: I don't want to learn a language because I'm a lazy dumbass faggot
Also, "we"? Which "we" are we talking about? Stupid arrogant faggots like yourself who thinks he can change the writing systems of a language he doesn't even know? Write everything in romanji? Do you fucking realize how retarded this statement is? No you don't, but the people in this thread who know the language do. Don't lump anyone else in with your ignorance. Try actually learning the language and come back to argue. You wouldn't be spewing the ridiculous shit that you are now.

Now fuck off you arrogant cocksucker.

>>4982023
And so how do they know what you're talking about when you SPEAK the language?

Your argument makes no sense.

>>4982113
u mad?

>>4982023

Hey that is an awesome example, and not half bad as a 早口言葉. I'll have to remember that one.

>>4983765
Nobody can counter this?

>>4984301
>>4983765
It's no different from English tongue twisters. Stop pretending you're being a smartass ಠ_ಠ

>>4984338
I'm saying if it makes no sense in writing it down as it sounds, how the fuck would it make any more sense when spoken out?

>>4983765
The same way that in English if someone asks "Which way do I turn?" and I respond "Right," they know I mean "turn to the right" and not "you are correct."

If the context isn't there, you'd be just as confused. For this reason, Japanese humor in many cases is built off kanji puns or characters misunderstanding kanji of certain words.
To use an example at your level, in GTO, there's a scene where Onizuka is told that one of his students has had past trauma. Onizuka hears "torauma," which, if it were written, would be written in katakana because it's an English word. However, Onizuka being a bit of a dope thinks, "torauma = tora (tiger) + uma (horse)," and assumes that his student is under attack by a monster tiger-horse. Hilarity ensues.

>>4984357
Now you're not making any sense. I give up. Believe what you want.

>>4983765
>>4984301
>>4984357
Sorry for the delay. Y'know, I went to bed. >>4982023 and >>4984377 here.

Hiragana is used for traditional japanese while katakana is mostly for newer or foreign words

>>4984357
Speech is far less likely to exist with no context, and homonyms would exist either way. Written language frequently appears in fragments or snippets.

>>4984416
I mean homophones, durf.

>>4984377
Okay, you have kind of a point, but you are still assuming a sentence without any kind of context.

>>4984454
Then we're at a point where you either have to study further yourself or take my word for it that there are enough homophones in Japanese that it becomes exceedingly confusing, even with context, to figure out what is being said. Many words are homophonous with grammatical functions of a sentence (meaning that if it were written entirely in katakana or without the pacing and emphasis of being said aloud, you'd get enormously confused), and without spaces, it's hard to tell what is a sentence particle and what's a part of a word. You might be able to figure it out in ~10-30 seconds, but considering this would be every sentence, it'd slow your reading down by a lot. Kanji don't just serve to show meaning, their existence in the sentence helps make clear where words begin and end, as Japanese is written without spaces.
Written language doesn't work like spoken language. It's not a conversation. With Japanese, sometimes context will help you, but especially with written content, that's not enough. Kanji is Japanese's way of "spelling it out."

>>4984454
No, he's assuming a sentence heard by a very stupid and very prideful moron. Maybe you should read GTO, or watch the anime, or watch the live action series, or get your head out your ass and realize that if you misunderstand someone speaking to you you can ask them to clarify while text is unable to interact that freely with the reader.

Chinese was the first literary language that japan used. Kanji is a derivative from the Chinese that was used. Today, you are supposed to know around 2,000 characters at the end of high school. Not many people actually know those 2,000 characters after school.

Katakana is used primary for foreign words

Hiragana is mainly used as suffixes. They are also used for words that there is no or they don't use the Kanji for. Also, Hiragana is usually printed right next to the Kanji with the correct meaning/spelling. That's called Furigana.

>>4984524
2000 is after junior high

>>4984523
That still doesn't counter my point, which is that context is enough and you don't need Kanji for that.

>>4984547
You're not experienced enough in the language to make that claim. We're telling you it's not.

>>4984547
ugh. Honestly just take a japanese class up till the second semester when you usually start learning Kanji. It makes sense to the writing system though I honestly hated learning the characters.

No one on 4chan will revolutionize a system that has worked just fine for a millennium and a half.

Nice to see this thread is still going on. So let's recap! Supportive arguments to have both hiragana & katakana thus far are basically these:
1. makes things easier to read
2. both have their own purposes

1: mixing two syllable systems together only creates problems in reading in my experience. ever read something and mistakingly thought it was katakana "re" or "ko" when in fact it was hiragana "shi" or "tsu"?
2: you can visualize the idiotism behind that argument easiest by imagining sfx, loanwords, technical terms and foreign names things written in cyrillic instead of latin alphabet in western languages.

>>4984615
1) I can't say I've ever had such an experience in 5 years of Japanese study. "Ko" and "tsu" look nothing alike, and you can easily tell the difference between a hiragana し and a katakana レ. For the latter, this is especially true in hand-written situations because katakana "re" is always an angle with a point, and "shi" is curved. Outside of super-deformed print styles, both alphabets are easy to read and distinguish.
2) Reducto ad absurdam coupled with fallacy of appropriation.

Plus, it doesn't just "make reading easier." That's reducing the argument to the point that it no longer has the same meaning. It makes reading in any fluid capacity possible, which is more important to a language than it being easier to learn for non-native speakers.

With the same spirit you had, here's the case against kana and kanji:
1) It's too hard.
2) There's too many.
3) I don't want to do it.
4) The Japanese nation should alter their language to convenience me and people like me.
5) My small amount of experience with the language leads me to believe there is no harm in eliminating their current writing system.

>>4984659
Fascinating.

>>4976291
i stopped using capital letters years ago. you don't lose any meaning except in very rare cases. and those can usually be avoided by rewording.

>>4984672
Get out.

Capital letters are such a joke. Start of sentence? Yeah, because the punctuation mark ending the previous sentence doesn't make that obvious. Names? Yeah, like those aren't woefully obvious as well. Acronyms? Just use punctuation and they're unambiguous. There's quite simply no need for two sets of letters.

That doesn't mean there's no benefit assuming they already exist and are known, but if we only had lowercase we sure as hell wouldn't bother developing uppercase in our current state.

I've been wondering. Are there any good logical reasons to have two alphabets, which both cover the exact same letters? I'm talking about uppercase and lowercase, ofcourse.

Do the brits have any plan to just stick to either one?

inb4: someone post

>>4983765
>>4984547
for the last time, reading efficiency. Do you read English even close to the rate you talk?
Talking gives more time, more context, and uses FAR less words on average than reading.

I know you won't find this here, but the written and spoken language for English is also very different. Plenty of rules to make things hard, having to write a flow that keeps the reader interested, and using specific words not often used in conversation are all part of the task.

You can read hiragana only text but unless the context is in a very narrow range it takes a long time to read due to:
not having spaces between words / grammar points (at a glance hiragana flows forever).
Having to figure out each word by the sound alone (as above, what does this はしmean?)

So, chatting in an online game or community? yeah sure, go ahead use hiragana or romaji. People will still find you hard to understand in anything outside of talking about the game.
Any decent level book? I'll take my kanji.

I'll say it again: >It only changes for the natives to use it more efficiently.
By the way, capitalization is much less significant than katakana or kanji. The only time it truly clarifies anything is in the case of distinguishing nouns, but it does make certain things easier to read.
The normal example is:
I had to help my uncle Jack off a horse.
I had to help my uncle jack off a horse.
otherwise it is extremely rare. Since a period/question mark/exclamation point already marks when a sentence ends, why do we need to capitalize? It reads a little easier by breaking up the text.

To even attempt to argue that kanji and katakana do not clarify what is written when you think capitalization does just shows that you haven't even attempted to learn or use the written language outside of a first semester Japanese class. I have doubts that you have even attempted to understand any other language besides one you learned the way as a native.

Upper case and lower case are not analogous to katakana and hiragana. Goodnight!

>>4984659
1. fine then. can't argue "works for me" type of arguments. never worked with Fedora users either.
2. argument stripped to absurdity it is, because the whole idea is absurd. mixing cyrillic with latin alphabet for some decided cases is absurd. you should see where I'm getting with this.

>>4984697
Capital Letters are underused in the English Language. Why do you capitalize "I", (sometimes "You") and "American", "British", but not all the other Nouns? This is why some people think adding -ing to a Word makes it a Noun. If Nouns were written with a Capital Letter, Sentences would be so much easier to read.

>>4984757
So, German, right?

>>4984615
1. how is it confusing? are you less than a couple months into your study? No, only if the person's hard writing is terrible, because I don't have enough experience reading Japanese chicken scratch. Once you master both of them reading the sound doesn't matter. Do you think native Japanese have problems reading either set? (hint: they don't)
It instantly narrows down the possible choices for the word.

2. Again, katakana is for symbolizing something is different about a word: loanwords, onomatopoeia, words you don't know the kanji for, etc.

Once you get past your little bubble where the context and grammar is limited and structured, and your reading rate far surpasses your speaking rate you will appreciate these things. Both kanji and katakana give reading efficiency by making words clear. That is their only purpose. If you can't see the advantage of that I don't know what to say, but please don't argue that you think capitalization is more important. To say that just shows you are putting little effort into understanding any other language, and the structures that have evolved around it.
Again:
It only changes for the natives to use it more efficiently.
It only changes for the natives to use it more efficiently.
It only changes for the natives to use it more efficiently.

nobody cares about how hard it makes it for you to read. In fact, they would rather people not be able to learn the language.
You can always ask people to only use hiragana though, see how that works out.

>>4984697
I remember being annoyed the first time I noticed people writing like that on 4chan but then realized it was a pratical timesaving way to write.

TL;DR I'm ok with this.

>>4984755
>argument stripped to absurdity it is,
When arguing language, you don't want to garble out something like this.
2) I see where you're going with this. No. It's not the same. Japanese and English are not 1:1 analogous and pretending that they are in any context is absurd. Katakana words written in hiragana among everything else would be making things far harder on yourself and everyone else.

Why don't all westerners just write with phonetic symbols? English pronunciation rules don't make any sense at all. See this word "ghoti". Can you read it? "ghoti"? Yeah, it's pronounced "fish". gh from "laugh", o from "women" and ti from "nation" = fish. I read "Read" in Reading.
English words aren't pronounced the way they are written at all. You should all change to phonetic symbols to make it easier to learn for stupid people like me.

>>4981987
Actaully, there were some proposal(latin24? roman36? I can't remember its name) which keeps cases, but removes a lot of letters: every uppercase letter is scaled version of lowercase.

I think having the Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji make the language easier to read.

Have you ever tried to read a paragraph written completely in Hiragana, it is a complete pain in the ass. This is especially true if you know a higher number of Kanji (500+)

OP You have obviously never studied Japanese in any great depth.

>1: mixing two syllable systems together only creates problems in reading in my experience. ever read something and mistakingly thought it was katakana "re" or "ko" when in fact it was hiragana "shi" or "tsu"?

In my experience keeping letters dbpq in English create problemsproblems in reading in my experience. Ever read something and mistakingly thought it was q or p when in fact it was d or b?

>>4984885
Oh, I hate it when I write down my game passwords and can't remember if that character was an O or a 0.

>>4984922
That's why you should write zero as ø

>>4984885

How the hell does one confuse レ and コ withし and つ?

>>>/lang/

>>4984929

But that's the empty set...

>>4984968
I sugest you tell that to the gentlemen from the /v/ threads too, eh.

>>4984787
I'm not studying japanese, so I'm okay with your 1st set arguments. however...

2. this is really going circles here, but is it really so impossible for you to imagine if it would happen in latin written language? the cyrillic thing I mean. two differing typesets just because because.

>please don't argue that you think capitalization is more important.
I've never touched that subject.

>>4984301
>>4983765
CONTEXT

>>4984831
That would look fucking trippy, I want to see a font like that.

>>4985103
Found it. It's called Alphabet 26.

Info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradbury_Thompson#Alphabet_26

Pic related and animated.

Let's speculate about how we can improve languages we don't even know!

>>4985168
Oh I was expecting enlarged lowercase letters but I guess that wouldn't work well compared with shrinking the uppercase ones. I don't like it, the lowercase latin alphabet is nice and soft.

>>4985235
except when font sucks. my trip is actually 8fuilcirno when not capped.

>>4984983
if they did it for a reason, natives would have no problem with it. The fact is, katakana is such a minor deal that no one will change it just because it may seem unnecessary to people that learn the language as a non-native. It helps break up the text and clarify with basically no extra cost for a native. You will stop being annoyed by its existence very early on. It's not there 'just because'. People seem to forget that every language has problems unique to it when it comes to converting from their speech language to their written language (which came later).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana#Usage
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/kanji

There is no other reason besides making the text easier to read quickly by limiting word choice. English does this by having an infamously confusing spelling system, though it may have been easier to add a few more characters to represent other sounds. However, due to this a skilled native can blaze through English text since the words are usually very clear or even unique in spelling.

However, English spelling is so bad that even a large percent of natives cannot produce adequate written language.
Maybe they should have added more characters?

>>4984812
This.
Complain about hiragana and katakana as much as you want, but it doesn't take more than a couple of days to read both, and when you've learned that there are no more ridiculous rules of pronounciation like in English. I don't have a problem with English, but it's random and stupid how not only one letter, but a combination of two can suddenly change pronounciation entirely.

>>4985235
Lowercase characters are much more readable than upper case characters. This is because ascenders and descenders are mixed instead of EVERY CHARACTER HAVING THE THE EXACT SAME HEIGHT.

>>4985244
I am completely baffled at how anyone thought that l should look just like l. I really am.

>>4985272
>no more ridiculous rules of pronounciation like in English
Well, except for は when used as a particle of course.

>>4984983
Because you don't study japanese, you probably forgot that they don't use spaces to seperate words, therefore they actually need visual clue to tell where the word ends. You don't need to vizualize it in english because

you easily can tell where word ends:

> I ate borscht and sshi this morning
> I ate борщ and щи this morning

私はボルシチとシチーを食べた.

And now let's try in kana only

私はぼるしちとしちーを食べた.

Try to separate it into words.

>>4985294
:s/kana/hiragana

>>4985294
ー isn't used with hiragana. Add another い instead.

>>4985294
Yeah, I agree that spaces are pretty useful, but japanese works fine with the kanji mixed in, like people were discussing earlier.
I do admit that our western languages are on to something with the spaces though.

>>4985294
add spaces, problem solved. tada.

>>4984752
>You can read hiragana only text but unless the context is in a very narrow range it takes a long time to read due to:
>not having spaces between words / grammar points (at a glance hiragana flows forever).
So instead of simply adding spaces to the language, they decided to create 5000+ unique symbols. Such logic!

>>4984787
>nobody cares about how hard it makes it for you to read. In fact, they would rather people not be able to learn the language.
Exactly. Why don't you just admit this is the real reason to stick to this archaic, inefficient system, and also the reason why you are defending it so vigorously?

>>4984885
>Ever read something and mistakingly thought it was q or p when in fact it was d or b?
No. You are probably dyslexic.

>>4985418
>5000+ unique symbols
>unique
The kanji you can't create with these radicals are next to none.
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1R

>>4985418
>So instead of simply adding spaces to the language, they decided to create 5000+ unique symbols. Such logic!
No, they didn't simple create them, they stole them from the chinese before they got hiragana.
Either way, you're a baka. Maybe different people have different tastes, Japanese and english are different languages.
You claim english is superior because it's easy to learn. That might not necessarily be important to japanese, they would rather have their kanji which are rather interesting and do actually contribute to the language in a positive way.

>>4985489
Thanks for conceding your argument to me. I'm glad you admit the Latin alphabet is a better solution than the combination of katakana, hiragana and kanji is, and that it is only still in use because of hurrr culture.

>>4985444
Oh, right, just like O and Q are not unique characters, right? I mean, Q is just O with a little line in the bottom-right corner! And B is obviously just based on the P "radical"!

>>4985507
He said nothing like that.

Given that you have problems understanding texts in Latin script, I doubt you have any credentials to praise it or criticize other writing systems.

>>4985523
Hehehe, nice one, fucking nigger.

>>4985418
>So instead of simply adding spaces to the language, they decided to create 5000+ unique symbols. Such logic!
Doesn't solve problems of homophones. No language in that region of the world wrote with spaces. There's no reason for them to when they had a pre-established system that worked. In context with the Japanese language, spaces do not make grammatical sense. Particles in the sentences that contribute to understanding meaning would be needlessly complicated by the addition of spaces. But then, you don't know your head from your ass in Japanese, so I wouldn't expect you to understand that.
>Exactly. Why don't you just admit this is the real reason to stick to this archaic, inefficient system, and also the reason why you are defending it so vigorously?
Because there's a lot more to it than "they don't care about your pathetic attempts to learn their language." Plus, you're wrong and on the internet. We must insult you like you vigorously insult people with much more knowledge than yourself.
>No. You are probably dyslexic.
This is a common problem in English. It's exceedingly problematic (among many other factors of our language) for non-native speakers. Maybe we should change our writing system entirely to make life easier for those people.

>>4985418
spaces don't solve the homophone problem. adopting Chinese may have been a bit much (it is more like 3-4k honestly), but the alternative to allow reading quickly would require something akin to English spelling or an expansion of sounds like Korean.

as for the q or p and d or b, that person was making a joke about confusing katakana / hiragana.

As for actually applying the spaces - you think they haven't tried? I'm sure Japan, just like Korea, tried to simplify their language at one point, but wasn't successful.

Is the spelling system of English not archaic and inefficient? Why don't they change it so it makes sense?
It took me less time to read kanji than getting familiar with English spelling, but I guess that would be due to the age of study.

The fact of the matter is language isn't structured by logic. Maybe they will change it by taking out kanji (or more likely, reducing the number of characters, oh wait they just increased the number of standard characters recently).
Do you also have these problems against Chinese?
Does it shock you that most Chinese people think English makes absolutely no sense at all and Chinese is perfectly logical?

>No. You are probably dyslexic.
funny you should mention this. You know that English is notorious for this when even natives have considerably more problems than most languages.

>>4985611
You keep tooting your horn about being so much more knowledgeable for knowing Japanese scripture and how anyone who thinks it's a chore and inefficient is "too dumb to learn it" that it really comes off as if you have no real reason to believe it is actually superior besides the fact that you believe it makes YOU superior for knowing it.

If you are seriously arguing that using thousands of extra characters is a better solution than adding spaces to sentences to improve readability, you must not have very much more convincing arguments that demonstrate how Kanji is supposed to be superior to Latin.

You assume no context in all your examples, assume the absence of spaces and other means of punctuation and sentence structure, and you make a huge deal about some goddamn homophones, which every language has and nobody needs a second writing system to make clear what is being said IN CONTEXT.

>>4985514
Such a good boy. You thought that up all by yourself?

>>4985644
>Is the spelling system of English not archaic and inefficient? Why don't they change it so it makes sense?
It's mostly illogical because English is made up of loanwords of many different languages. If you take all the words with Germanic origin, they all follow the same spelling rules, usually. Same with the words taken from French. But when you take a word like "toilet" which should be pronounced twah-let, and people start pronouncing it like it was written, things start to become confusing.

>>4985744
Don't have a good counterargument to that one, do you?

>>4985763
Why would I need a counterargument. You're right
>I mean, Q is just O with a little line in the bottom-right corner!
Q is really just an O with an extra line. And that's EXACTLY how children learn how to write a Q.
Learning Q after you've learned O is MUCH easier than than learning a "unique" letter. Imagine Q would be ـق . What's easier to learn, O with a line added or ـق
?

>>4985820
My point is simply that if you look at it that way, the Latin alphabet isn't even made up of 26 "unique" characters.

What I mean is, you can't say "Kanji isn't so bad, they're all based on these 200 radicals" and then not also deconstruct the Latin alphabet into a few "base" characters. Not that it makes much of a difference, the amount of Kanji "radicals" is still fucking huge and the Latin alphabet is small to begin with. And even then we have several characters that we don't even really need, like Q which can be replaced with K, for example.

>>4985696
My point is that it's not that hard. Considering well over a billion people fluently read and speak both Chinese and Japanese, it is no impossible task. It took me (oh dear Lord) one week to learn both systems of Kana, and graduates of junior high in Japan know excess of 2000 characters. Being too much of a wuss to learn it and insisting that the language change to your superior system is laziness and presumptuous.
The only thing knowing more about Japanese gets me over you is authority on addressing issues of how the language works. You don't know. You don't have any idea, and if you're giving up on kana, you'll never know. I've given you guidance: try translating Konjaku Monogatari (entirely in katakana) or Hojoki (almost all in hiragana).
Roman characters ARE easier. There's no question. Roman characters are, however, inadequate in representing with clarity and fluidity the Japanese language. To show you this, I'd have to sit you down with texts and babysit you through the experience. Either keep learning or give the fuck up.

Extra characters were not added. You don't know shit about the etymology of the Japanese language, and addressing it in the way that you are is foolishness. You really are trying to force a square peg through a round hole.

At least I can give examples.
Japanese uses no spaces save after a comma, and their comma rules vary strongly from ours. Most older Japanese texts will not use commas at all. Periods will be the only clear separations of one idea to the next.
Chinese addresses homophone issues in the same manner; Romantic languages do so with our royally fucked up spelling system. "Scythe"? What the fuck happened to the alphabet there? You have two soft letter combinations, a silent vowel, and a letter normally not considered a "vowel" in the strictest terms being used as one. Imagine coming at this word being a non-native speaker. Hell, look at French, and tell me that language is "efficient."

>>4985854
At least our language doesn't have all of the silly latin extended characters with hats and accents and dots and all manner of craziness.
Be happy with what we have.

>>4985696 Continued.
There are significantly more homophones in those languages than any other. As I've already said, it's a large basis of Japanese humor. Look up some manzai since you seem to have the free time.
雨　飴　編め　天　あめ　all of these are pronounced ame
例　令　零　礼　0　霊　嶺 all of these are pronounced rei
橋　箸　端　走　嘴　波子 all of these are pronounced hashi
All of these words have completely different meanings. When you say "context will explain everything," I can tell you as someone who speaks the language and translates text, it's not enough. It would be as if we always spoke with pronouns but no antecedents. Japanese also frequently omits the subjects of sentences. This adds heavily to reading comprehension difficulties. I'm sure you know what that's like.

I'm not arguing that kanji/kana is a "superior" system. I'm arguing that "lol just write it all in romanji" would not be an effective way of communicating Japanese.

>>4985854
Also add ä ö ü ë á, à, â, é, è, ê, í, ì, î, ó, ò, ô, ú, ù, û š ă ø ' Ñ Æ (consists of the "radicals" A and E) dž Ș, ș Ş, ş Ț, ț Ţ, ţ Ç Ý ï, ÿ and all the others used in by the western countries.

>>4985891
>"lol just write it all in romanji"
If I look at this thread: "lol just write it all in English"
"American English!"

>>4985870
>Imagine coming at this word being a non-native speaker.
Well, I have, and I did think it was pronounced "skait" at first. I'm not even saying English spelling is logical and flawless, you're just pulling that out as a strawman.

But if we can take characters, group them together to create different sounds, why can't the Japanese? In fact, that's what they actually already DO with katakana (maybe with hiragana too, I don't know for sure).

And English spelling is definitely not without any structure to it. It's just that the rules are not uniform, because of it being based on many different languages.

So many people here can't even spell "romaji".

>>4985997
Why would you spell it like that? It's wrong.

>>4986008
Because
1. It's correct
2. ローマン is romance, not Roman whereas ローマ is Rome.

>>4985761
that doesn't change that if all language should be logical English is quite possibly one of the worst with its spelling.
it combines a huge vocabulary with a large number of exceptions.

You have much more context when speaking than when reading and writing.
Also, when Chinese was adopted it supposedly added more complexity to the language, which makes it even harder to take out kanji:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Japanese_vocabulary

I guess that was a bit of an 'oops!'

I don't see the problem here, each language has its own difficulties and strengths.

>>4986008

In Japanese it is ローマ字 or rōmaji. Romanji is a common error.