/jp/ - Otaku Culture

[Anonymous No.]

I always wondered why japanese written sentences always have MINI-JAPANESE written on top of some words.

Took me a while to notice that they were only written on top of the Chinese characters.

Can someone tell me what those mini-japanese characters are for?

[Anonymous No.]

It's called furigana, it's so kids can read the Kanji.

[Milfeulle is my Waifu !iS.Yuri/S. No.]

>>3417360
or faggots.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417360
Well this, plus the fact that kanji can be read many different ways.

[Anonymous No.]

Also for names, because there's a fucking ton of weird ways to write/read a name.

[Anonymous No.]

Ah, I see.

No wonder I was told by many people that Japanese is a very inefficient language to learn...

[Anonymous No.]

Then sometimes the kanji and the furigana have nothing to do with each other.

[Anonymous No.]

Sometimes, furigana can be used for writing English words with kanji.
ie:
Soul Society is written in the furigana for 尸魂界.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417383
No language is inefficient, bro.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417390
So basically, they write it in Chinese, but they put a totally random Japanese pronunciation on top of the kanji.

How needlessly complex. Must be living hell for those poor Japanese kids to learn. It's so unorganized.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417383
>inefficient
That really depends on what you mean by "efficient."

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417411
Efficiency. A language that will follow a certain set of rules and continue to due so with little exceptions.

Consider Japanese however. In the 19th century, most of Japanese was 9/10 Kanji and 1/10 Hiragana. Now its changed to become 6/10 Hiragana , 3/10 Kanji, 1/10 Katagana.

Without any preset DEFINITE language rules, Japanese is going to continue to morph. In 50 years, it may start sounding like bastardized English...

[Anonymous No.]

I am going to call furigana MINI-JAPANESE from now on.

...Okay, maybe not.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417408
>totally random
No, each case makes perfect sense:
>>3417360
>so kids can read the kanji
People with bigger vocabularies can read it fast, while kids can read it too.
English example: writing "hydraulic (water-powered)"

>>3417378
>names
A lot of names can be pronounced in different ways, even in English. Some names, you might not even know how to pronounce.
Examples: Simon (SAI-men, SHE-moan, sih-MOAN)

>>3417380
>kanji can be read many different ways
Synonyms.

>>3417382
>nothing to do with each other.
Usually done when one word implies another.
Double entendres for the stupid.

>>3417390
>writing English words with kanji.
尸魂界 takes up less space than ソウル·ソサエティ.
And 尸魂界 pretty much means Soul Society.

Another example of furigana would be used when a character is talking with their mouth full or with another otherwise incomprehensible slur.
In English, this is commonly seen as:
Mm rmmbmb mmbmbm mb mm cmm rmm whmm mm rmmm mhm mmhm mm mmh mmhmmhmhmhm (I'm really being strangled, but you can read what I'm trying to say in the following parentheses).

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417441
Also, whenever something cannot be properly named using Hiragana, they just used Katagana to make it sound like the English equivalent.

Because of this however, the characters themselves have absolutely no meaning or relationship to the base language at all and are nothing other than grunts and noises to be memorized.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417441
And that's the efficient use of... what?

[Anonymous No.]

ITT, people who don't speak Jap try to defend Jap

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417408
>>3417383
8.5/10 nice job.

[Anonymous No.]

I suck alien dick.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417359
Efficiency. A language that will follow a certain set of rules and continue to due so with little exceptions.

Consider English however. In the 19th century, most of English was 9/10 Latin and 1/10 Greeke. Now its changed to become 6/10 Latin, 3/10 Greeke, 1/10 French.

Without any preset DEFINITE language rules, English is going to continue to morph. In 50 years, it may start sounding like bastardized European/African...

Also, whenever something cannot be properly named using English, they just used the Latin alphabet to make it sound like the loan language equivalent.

Because of this however, the characters themselves have absolutely no meaning or relationship to the base language at all and are nothing other than grunts and noises to be memorized.
Or they just use Latin and Greeke prefixes and suffixes to make shit up.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417484
By efficient, I mean that it has a basic set of rules that can allow further learning of the language to be much more straightforward.

Look at English. Many words' meanings can be easily understood just because they use simple to learn prefixes/suffixes and a base word.

Hell, even Chinese has it's base characters that actually have meaning.

However, Japanese barely has set of simple rules to help someone learn. Sure, if you were born there it would be easier. But even a baby exposed to a language of grunts and moans can learn to understand it.

Like I said here >>3417441,
Japanese whores itself out too easily. By adding new words to a language using a lexicon of random sounds (with no meaning), the language stops having any actual background and soon becomes random jibberish.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417521
>Consider English however. In the 19th century, most of English was 9/10 Latin and 1/10 Greeke. Now its changed to become 6/10 Latin, 3/10 Greeke, 1/10 French.

Not sure what you're talking about but English is a germanic language with a shitton of Latin in it. Most of the every day language is anglosaxon. Most of our french shows up in government/law. Most of our greek comes from science/engineering (hydraulics). And then latin is just everywhere (aquarium).

[MolesterJim No.]

>>3417521
It's spelled 'Greek', goddammit.
And Greece is the country.

[Anonymous No.]

It's not random, nor are they unorganized, or inefficient.

Enough with this amerifag "Different from English = SHIT FOR BARBARIANS" mentality, it's retarded and so overused it's no longer funny

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417547
That's the point thou. English words actually have a traceable root.

Many japanese words however are just made of Hiragana. Basically a depository of meaningless sounds.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417559
Copypasta.
Original had the misspelling "katagana."

[Anonymous No.]

English language inferior. Alphabet system gets outweighed by the general clusterfuck that is the entire language.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417574
So, English is superior because it steals from every European and Arabic language, whereas Japanese is inferior because it steals from Chinese and European languages?

>just made of Hiragana. Basically a depository of meaningless sounds.
English is only made of letters. Basically a depository of meaningless sounds.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417574
What do you mean? Most of japanese is either "japanese" in origin (there's a scholarly name for this) or chinese in origin. Usually you get chinese compounds similar to the way we use greak/latin. Ie the japanese word would be "water" but words like "hydrolic" and "aquarium" would have Chinese roots.

You're just talking about languages changing over time, and they you were describing english doesn't sound anything close to being true.

[Anonymous No.]

I love how English is so efficient and sticks to its rules.
I know that the 'ough' in tough is pronounced 'uff.'

So now, I can apply that knowledge and immediately know how to pronounce cough, bough, dough, thought, through and slough.

[Anonymous No.]

Makes reading nip easier for beginners. I just need to work on my vocab....

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417600
Oh please, stop nitpicking. A letter in English is like a stroke in an Asian character. I'm not bashing the way they write. I'm bashing how the overall language system is uncoordinated.

>>3417601
Stealing is fine. However, when a language steals, it usually keeps a similar pronunciation of the stolen language. When Japanese uses Kanji, it gives the words totally different and many varied pronunciations. Plus, if they are going to use some kanji (which actually has roots), why not stick with it. Instead, they create new words using a sound dictionary so it sounds like the English word.

I have no problem with using Katakana for proper nouns and names, but it should never be used for anything other than that. Actual nouns should either be derived from Hiragana or Kanji.

Anyhow, it's already painfully obvious Japanese is difficult and inefficient to learn. Any language that commonly uses a system of characters that make a sound but have no root is terrible in my perspective.

Don't get me wrong thou. It definitely is a nice SOUNDING language.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417631
English is definitely not a super efficient language. However, despite it's random exceptions here and there, it generally follows the basic grammar/pronunciation rules. That's why although we laugh at immigrants with terrible accents/pronunciation, their grammar is still good enough that we can understand them (for the most part).

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417689
>Gaijin who thinks his slanted opinion has any relevance.

[Anonymous No.]

Hey fags, Sejong the Great here. When are you going to get a writing system that doesn't suck?

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417709
Actually, I know Mandarin as well as English (obviously). So I have experience with a proper Asian language.

If a noun in English is translated to Chinese, the Chinese equivalent uses characters that retain meaning.

Example:

English - Microwave
Chinese - Wei Bo Lu ("Wei Bo" means microwave, "Lu" means "oven")

Japanese however is - "mai - ku - rou - e - bu"
Sure it kinda sounds like microwave in English to us, but the characters themselves mean nothing in Japanese. Ask a Japanese person (who has never heard of a microwave) what it was and he'll just think you are on crack.

[Anonymous No.]

The trolling is strong in this thread.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417748
>"mai - ku - rou - e - bu"
What the fuck kind of Japanese do you speak? Microwave is 電子レンジ Denshirenji, Denshi = Electric, renji = oven. Moron.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417689
>the overall language system is uncoordinated
It's plenty coordinated, bro. There are even particles that specify what the subject, direct object, and indirect objects are. Okurigana follows kanji to show conjugation. There's even a verbal marker for questions, instead of English where you have to rearrange the words in a certain order to form a question.
>I have no problem with using Katakana for proper nouns and names, but it should never be used for anything other than that. Actual nouns should either be derived from Hiragana or Kanji.
I have no problem with using the Latin alphabet for proper nouns and names, but it should never be used for anything other than that. Actual nouns should either be derived from Latin or Greek roots.
Say goodbye to your sauerkraut, your spaghetti, your babushka, and your alcohol; say hello to your German cabbage, long Italian noodles, Russian headscarves, and your hydroxyl group bounded to a carbon.

>Any language that commonly uses a system of characters that make a sound but have no root

There you go again with "katakana loanwords have no root."
What is the root for table? The French word table, from the Latin word, tabula.
What is the root for テーブル? The French word table, from the Latin word, tabula.

How is writing it in katakana for use in Japanese any different than writing it in Latin characters for use in English?

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417748
>Chinese - Wei Bo Lu ("Wei Bo" means microwave, "Lu" means "oven")
Chinese is tonal. Change the tone of any of the syllables and you're fucked, the meaning changes. I find Chinese a bit a pain to learn. You will have to memorize lots of tones and lots of characters.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417777
more like "electric range"

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417748
>If a noun in English is translated to Chinese, the Chinese equivalent uses characters that retain meaning.
That's because Chinese sucks balls at transliteration, to or from.

[Anonymous No.]

ITT serious responses.
OP made a thread in /jp/ to talk about how inefficient Japanese is.
Well played.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417800
/jp/ is never serious.
Only bored.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417359
the green arrows in OP's picture are now dicks being waved over Yui and Mio.
you can't unsee now.

[Anonymous No.]

Thank you for this thread! I always wondered that too.

[Anonymous No.]

furigana is fucking awesome.

[Anonymous No.]

どっきゅん☆どっきゅん☆

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417834
嘘だ!嘘だ!嘘だ!嘘だ!

[Anonymous No.]

You aren't seeing the problem here...

Japanese is basically this:
* Hiragana - basic pronouns, nouns, verbs, adjectives (this is pretty much the only actual japanese part of the language)
*Kanji - Chinese
*Katakana - Romanization (english, basically a germanic language)

So what it does is take languages that have absolutely ZERO connection or share any history and mixes it together into this big pile of chunks.

Reading Japanese is like reading a massive orgy embedded with words borrowed from totally different backgrounds (germanic and chinese).

Does is blend?
Sure it does!

But does it end up with chunks that don't mix well floating at the top?
You betcha'.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417885
>You aren't seeing the problem here...

Precisely. We aren't.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417904
Then take off your eyepatch and look closer.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417885
>Katakana - Romanization
What?

Both hiragana and katakana are from Chinese by the way. So their entire written language is based on one source.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417946
Katagana isn't based on Chinese at all. It is just a collection of characters, each making a certain sound.

It's pretty much only used to help people say kanji and shitty-translate English words. It is quite limited as these are just sounds and nothing more. No meaning attached.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3418001

>Katagana isn't based on Chinese at all

伊ー＞イ
江ー＞エ
加ー＞カ
久ー＞ク
千ー＞チ
八ー＞ハ
比ー＞ヒ
祢ー＞ネ
三ー＞三
利ー＞リ

[Anonymous No.]

>三ー＞三

[Anonymous No.]

>>3418001
>Katagana isn't based on Chinese at all.
It's been obvious that you don't know anything about Japanese, but Jesus Christ.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3418050
Dude, I'm talking meaning wise. It's not even close.
Obviously Japanese based their characters on Chinese.

Let's say a Japanese word using katakana was to use 三. That word would have nothing to do with the number 3. The 三 becomes a mere sound, nothing more.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3418128
Do you even know about on and kun readings?

[Sakura !!sCKns1iPkwx No.]

I can't believe people are actually arguing with this guy. He clearly has no idea what he is talking about.

[Sakura !!sCKns1iPkwx No.]

>>3418128
>Let's say a Japanese word using katakana was to use 三
You mean ミ, nice try though.
>That word would have nothing to do with the number 3
ミ is not a word, and isn't supposed to have anything to do with the number 3, it's simply a sound.
>The 三 becomes a mere sound, nothing more.
And?

And here I am replying to him too. Good lord.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417885
Your trolling is excellent enough that I'll play along.

The Japanese use of kanji has changed somewhat from the Chinese hanzi they originated from, due to centuries in isolation and xenophobic hostility. 好 is no longer used in the same way as it is in Chinese, just as an example.

The reason most kanji have multiple pronunciations is also partially attributable to the isolation. Originally, they might have been spoken the same as the Chinese. However, the Japanese felt a need to do away with the tonal aspect of the language, as well as a need to merge the Chinese pronunciations into the more commonly-spoken tongues of Japan.
Thus, on'yomi.

However, using on'yomi for every little thing didn't sound right to a Japanese ear. They already had words for many things kanji shorthanded. Thus, they assigned the kanji to various native Japanese words and their native pronunciations.
Thus, kun'yomi. And also nanori, to an extent, for names.

Hiragana is different. See, kanji was all fine and good, but they needed something simpler for when they needed to spell things out phonetically (see the above for reasons why they'd need that). They went with man'yogana, which was alright in a sense, but it was still kanji being repurposed, which could easily confuse readers used to straight-up kanji. Eventually, the man'yogana started being written in a more shorthand fashion, until they evolved into the hiragana we know today.
See the pic attached for the visible process of this evolution.

(cont.)

[Anonymous No.]

>>3418198
(cont'd)

Katakana have a different origin, but a similar purpose to hiragana - that of a phonetic alphabet. They commonly use it for foreign loanwords, indication of foreign or on'yomi pronunciations (when used as furigana), or simply used as-is on billboards and signs because they're easier to write with paint-rollers than kanji and hiragana are.
(In my opinion, that last practical reason is the only real reason to have katakana in the first place. But that's just me.)

All of the above are in some way necessary to the Japanese language.
Why use kanji when there's hiragana? Because it lets you squeeze more words into smaller spaces.
Why still use on'yomi, or have different readings of the same kanji at all, for that matter? No practical reason; it's just been ingrained into the language for centuries. History and whatnot.

That's pretty much it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3418202 again.
About this...
>It is quite limited as these are just sounds and nothing more.

That's what makes it useful. Sometimes a phonetic character set succeeds where an ideogrammatic one fails.
For example, transliteration. Chinese sucks out loud at this, because it has no phonetic alphabet (could be wrong on this, feel free to correct me). So, they have to struggle to create a new combination of characters for every new word they import from other languages.

Japanese? It can just use katakana until and unless someone comes up with a way to write it in kanji that makes more sense.

[Anonymous No.]

Thanks for the fun guys. I love debating random things and you have definitely kept me entertained.

Anyhow, gnite.

I still stand by my point.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3418225
It's called PinYin.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3418242
Ah, I had completely forgotten about pinyin. Thanks.
Pinyin takes care of exporting the language (not counting tonality), but doesn't answer the issue of importing words from other languages.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417359
Efficiency. A language that will follow a certain set of rules and continue to due so with little exceptions.

Consider American however. In the 19th century, most of American was 9/10 English and 1/10 dumbfuck. Now its changed to become 6/10 dumbfuck, 3/10 English, 1/10 Spanish.

Without any preset DEFINITE language rules, American is going to continue to morph. In 50 years, it may start sounding like bastardised stupid cunt...

Also, whenever something cannot be properly named using American, they just put EXTREME in front of it.

Because of this however, the language themselves have absolutely no meaning or relationship to external reality at all and are nothing other than grunts and noises to be memorised.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3418301
Now you're just reaching.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3418312
All opinionated rants will suffer Masterwork Bastardisation.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3418312
No, just someone that thinks highly of their opinion and confuses it with fast often times. That and trying too hard.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417359
lol looks like mio's sucking dick

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417358
> Save the English language: http://www.anonta[removethis]lk.com/ICARE
Not sure if I understand you correctly. Please explain.

[Anonymous No.]

Also, how do you know when to use の?
If I wanted to say "Japanese breakfast", is this correct?
にほんのあさごはん
Or should I drop the の?

[Anonymous No.]

>>3418659
日本人の朝ご飯

[Anonymous No.]

>>3418659
You could say it >>3418664's way.

Personally, I prefer 和朝飯 in writing.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3418664
I see, so
にほんじんのあさごはん
in all hiragana

[Anonymous No.]

>>3418673
和朝飯：　２７　ｈｉｔｓ
和朝食：　１２４，０００　ｈｉｔｓ

[Anonymous No.]

>>3418674
Yeah, I guess.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3418744
see
>>3418673
>I prefer 和朝飯 in writing.
>prefer
Not arguing degrees of correctness. Just stating a preference.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417406
All languages are inefficient bro.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3418773
Not if Wittgenstein is allowed to have a say in their organisation !

[Anonymous No.]

Why so sage anon, why so sage?

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417380
that

lol op

[Just Another Tripfag !!Sv4KNs8Z/Bn No.]

[Anonymous No.]

seriously, troll thread

[Anonymous No.]

>>3417689
>Stealing is fine. However, when a language steals, it usually keeps a similar pronunciation of the stolen language. When Japanese uses Kanji, it gives the words totally different and many varied pronunciations. Plus, if they are going to use some kanji (which actually has roots), why not stick with it. Instead, they create new words using a sound dictionary so it sounds like the English word.

We do the exact same thing in English. Do you think the greeks went around talking about hydrolic energy or euchareotic bacteria?

Also I wasn't actually talkign about Japanese, I was commenting on your interpretation of the English language which was apparently 0/10 parts germanic when in reality I would guess at least 50% of the common language is germanic in origin. Latin, French and Greek show up in less common speech like in the legal system.

This is also very wrong:
>Consider American however. In the 19th century, most of American was 9/10 English and 1/10 dumbfuck. Now its changed to become 6/10 dumbfuck, 3/10 English, 1/10 Spanish.


I dont know where you're getting this shit but look up some history about English. A large portion of it is French and has been french for maybe 500 years no. There's no such thing as 9/10th American, we're talking 5/10 germanic and/or anglosaxon, and this is just a guess.

[Anonymous No.]

Guys, this is a troll.

Not even a very GOOD troll.

Will you quit trying to argue with a troll that's not even here anymore?