/jp/ - Otaku Culture

because changing centuries of words is a pain in the ass

Your post made me laugh because I actually could imagine it.

they stole them from the chinese

because it pissesoff americans like there's no tomorrow.

>>9210682
The typewriter era must have been really shitty for Japanese and chinese. Too bad there are computers now, ot they'd probably consider switching to full kana.

They actually did. They considered converting to the roman alphabet at that time, but they eventually gave up on the idea.

>>9210693
but even typing on the keyboard and phone is complicated in japanese

They would like to, but the old fucks who had to learn all this shit want the young ones to suffer like they did and learn all of their ridiculous, idiosyncratic characters.

To exclude waito piggus like OP.

>>9210684
All 8-bit era RPG were written entirely in kana.
Phantasy Star
Final Fantasy
Megami Tensei

just to name a few. Do not let everyone tell you that it's impossible to write and understand japanese without Kanji. That's bullshit.

Try to read a Japanese text written in kana only and you know why.

>>9210710
Mother 3.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zovz8ZV_B6s

>>9210703

It isn't impossible, but really annoying. Think about an English text without spaces and every letter capitalized and you get the picture.

>>9210710
No problem there.

Because then it would be like Koreans.

他妈的傻逼ｏｐ，说日文字太多？华文三千长用字算不算多？

>>9210718
>IMPLYINGTHISISNOTTHEBESTWAYTOTYPE

>>9210718
Then add spaces. They exist for a reason.
About upper case only, have you ever noticed that manga scanlations do this?

>>9210718
>without spaces

And what exactly prevents you from using them? Pic related.

>>9210718
not really. they do make spaces between words in jap and there are not shit tone of words which have the same spelling.

homophoneshomonymshomographsgotobed

>>9210682

They actually have cut down on the amount on kanji pretty significantly. in the 1940s they reduced it to only a handful of thousands. Before that I hear there were upwards of 10000 in circulation.

>About upper case only, have you ever noticed that manga scanlations do this?
Yeah true. But why did they do that in the first place? Was there a problem printing them normally?

>>9210765
lower case and upper case are merely accessory in the latin alphabet. there is no real need to have both. look i'm writing all in lower case, do you really have that many problems reading this?

and that begs a question... why don't we get rid of upper case? it's just a pointless bother... if we don't we can't really complain about japs not getting rid of kanji.

>>9210775
It's not all that difficult to remember to dot your t's and cross your i's, remembering a hundred thousand characters is different.

>>9210765
Scanlator groups have just followed the example of English comics, which are also all-caps. Why they did it in the first place, I'm not sure.

Maybe to add a conversational air (full capitalization and grammar seems stiff, sometimes;) I'm sure you could look this up somewhere.

>>9210780
You're off by about 99,000 there anon.

>>9210782
I studied Jap lit before dropping out of college, he's not far off.

>>9210780
Radicals

An example better suited to the comparison would be learning the word automobile versus the word car. There's no need for the former: it's just like kanji.

>>9210780
Ja pa nees haz kahn jee for the saym ree sen o ther ri ten layng gu a jes ar ent pur lee fun e tik. It mayks ree ding a payn; Wes ter ners hav tu me mo riz un in tu i tiv spel lings ra ther than kahn jees.

(This is my best approximation of purely phonetic English; there might be a lot of inconsistencies running around.)

>>9210792
>>omg my glorius nipon has ben insulted i must defend her with my life!!

>>9210795
It wasn't insulted, and I wasn't really defending it. I was just explaining why kanji exists because somebody asked why you can't, say, just write everything purely in kana. It's not unreadable by any means, but it is much slower.

>>9210738
>they do make spaces between words in jap

They generally don't.

>>9210799
And while I was doing that I forgot the other huge reason, which is the same word in Japanese can be pronounced different ways, so learning that a lot of different kana combinations mean the same thing without a heading to group them all other (the symbol) might be a pain.

They could have just standardized the readings when the typewriter age began but that would be really taking an axe to the language and that was only a few decades anyway.

>>9210799
yeah whatever nerd, use your ~logic~ and ~reason~ all you want but you can't hide behind it forever sperglord autist dickfag cumdrinker

>>9210738
hello i am this poster

forgive me for misleading you, i am clinically retarded and couldn’t count the fingers on one hand

also i am completely wrong

about everything

Ah,the stereotypical complaint from retards that never studied the language or have a shitty grasp of it.

Just -try- to read a real book without kanji, I dare you.
You don't want to lose kanji, trust me and everyone else that actually knows the language.

>>9210792
You should have used IPA spellings instead, it would have an added bonus of demonstrating the otherwise not covered need to learn the entirely new writing system.

>>9210813
Spaces and basic contextual knowledge.

>>9210819
Space and context this, retard.
すもももももももものうち
スモモも桃も桃のうち

>>9210682
Because they are the best way to put their language down. Have you never seen what sort of mess can be made when trying to put east-asian languages down with our letters?
I mean, sure you watched your favourite anime and read the karaoke subtitles and they seemed perfectly alright - but just delve a little deeper and you can end up like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den
Though admittedly that's Chinese, not Japanese.

>>9210809
more like you're a faggot and not me.

kanji is pretty and incredibly useful when reading. i wont see it disappear because fucking retards like op cant take a month to learn them all.

fuck you op, go learn German if you are so inept.

>>9210792
latin was almost completely phonetic. it was also written in all capital leters with no spaces.

HOCLEGEREPOTESTNE

the only real reason they haven't adopted a modern writing system is the same reason korean scholars were against hangul. the educated want reading to be something for only the educated.

the japs are already saying thinks like racki and sankyuu. Just wait and see, English will take over the whole country.

>>9210827
go learn another ten thousand then, weeaboo.

>>9210832
Just in time for the rest of the world to switch to arabic and mandarin.

It's a good thing that Kanji remains.
It acts as a good filter for keeping out retards like the op who are incapable of learning the language.

A backwards language for a backwards country.

>>9210832
england is already using French stuff such as apricot, lion, rouge, and a bunch of other stuff. it is only a matter of time right?

where did /jp/ go? where did you idiots come from?

>>9210850
>it is only a matter of time right?
Have you been to Reddit?

>le cool face
>le niwaka

French has taken over the English language

>>9210850
They went to bun.

We're waiting for you.

Not /jp/.
>>>/lang/
>>>/int/

The only Japanese threads that are even remotely related are the learning threads for the purpose of accessing untranslated materials. Complaining about it has no relationship to the board theme.

>>9210832
We say stuff like Cuh-Me-Cut-Se and tsunami. Surely we will soon use kana.

>>9210856
There can be language otaku. It's relevant.; a lot of us aspire to learn moonrunes.

>>9210868
>a lot of us aspire to learn moonrunes.
I said this is relevant. I said that this specific thread is unrelated because its entire purpose is to bitch about the language. That helps nobody. /jp/ is not your blog.

>>9210867
>Cuh-Me-Cut-Se
Sorry for that. I'm German if it wasn't obvious.

>>9210867
What horrifying mudland do you dwell in that people somehow speak in that manner?

>>9210879
Since I respect your people's work, I guess I can let it slide just this once.

>>9210876
Bitching about the language isn't mutually exclusive with learning about it. Just because it's not helping you, personally, doesn't mean it's a blog post.

>>9210889
Point to a single post in this thread that aids the learning of the language in any way.

Go ahead.

>>9210879

It makes sense in German. It's not like Japanese don't mutilate foreign words.

>>9210895
I said "learning about the langauage," which is not necessarily "learning the language." But surely you'll agree that a sense of background and history helps glue your understanding of a language together, right?

>>9210904
Your excuse is pathetic, shitposter.

>>9210682
They did try transition to western alphabet, but that didn't work well as there are so many homonyms etc. in the Japanese, almost every kana is a combination of consonant and vowel and hence amount of different words is quite limited unless you want to increase their length tremendously. If Japanese were to be made to fit our alphabet the changes would essentially render it no longer Japanese.

>>9210905
Are you posting ironically? It's still shitposting even if it's ironic.

OP here, this was way too easy

This was my facial expression when I saw the contents of this thread.

/jp/ a shit.

>>9210909
>le mfw
epic droll bro

op might think himself a troll, but the reason it worked is because it wasn’t out of place at all

Oh, Jesus Christ. If they went full kana it would be so much easier.

Do you notice it's always the people who try to learn Japanese, give up because it's too "hard", and then blame the language for their failures?
They're not going to convert the language to kana just to appease foreigners.
If you even took the time to learn Japanese, you would realize kanji consists of a lot less characters. Many of them contain simple characters rearranged in different ways.

>>9210934
I like Kana

>>9210939

>>9210971
more of these funny dogs!

I can't read Japanese written in hiragana, even though I can pronounce it. I don't even know how to read katakana, as in I'm totally illiterate in it.

Kanji is the only thing that allows me to read even a lick of Japanese. They're no harder then learning English's inconsistent spelling, which is so fucked up and worthless I can't even begin to guess how an English word is spelled.

>>9210981
PLEASE!

>>9210981

I have one language and one date for you:

Turkish and 1928

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_alphabet

> Implying Japanese wouldn't do an even better job if they weren't so narrow-minded.

>>9211169
>Velar approximant
ɰ(ﾟДﾟɰ)

>>9211169
Arabic script was fine, I don't know why they needed to do that
Or why Croatia abandoned Cyrillic