/jp/ - Otaku Culture

[Anonymous No.]

So, why exactly does kanji exist?

It may sound petty, but isn't it a fuckload more work to write out words in kanji when hiragana would be shorter? This is a serious question, wouldn't it be more practical to write that which lakes less time?

[Anonymous No.]

less about time, more about paper space

[Anonymous No.]

Reading speed with kanji is incredible.

[Anonymous No.]

Meiji language reforms. Smart people were smart because they knew lots of Kanji. Dumb people were dumb because they didn't know any Kanji. Smart people wanted to remain smart after reforms so they made the case for Kanji.

[Anonymous No.]

Reading straight hiragana is a bitch.

Not that I particularly like kanji either, but it's still better than straight hiragana.

[Ｋ１０ ～之～ 无名氏 No.]

you speak as if we writes computer font like

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250757
Hiragana is not shorter. It's two characters compared to kanji's one.

Hiragana and kanji take exactly the same amount of time to type in. In this case, hiragana takes more, in fact, since kanji is the default.

[Anonymous No.]

This is why the younger generation in Japan is becoming unable to hand-write kanji-- english input makes it obsolete.
The biggest reason it sticks around for reading is because of the homonym-potential

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250774
>Hiragana is not shorter. It's two characters compared to kanji's one.

You cannot seriously compare a kanji character like that to a hiragana character that takes 2 or 3 short strokes to write.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250771
Also cultural continuity. It was a concession to keep the educated elite complacent.

[Anonymous No.]

You now realize that 可愛い (kawaii) literally reads as "possible love"

Kanji is cool shit, even if it is cumbersome. That's called finesse.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250773
If I knew any better, I wouldn't be asking...which is why I am asking, so that I do know.

[Anonymous No.]

完成
感性
閑静
歓声
慣性
喚声
官製
陥穽
間性
関西
乾性
管制
寛政
乾生
喊声

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250780
They take the exact amount of strokes to write. Keystrokes, that is.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250792
Ah, well I was referring to actual handwriting.

[Anonymous No.]

Here's why.
菓 カ
貨 カ
苛 カ
科 カ
佳 カ
禍 カ
課 カ
箇 カ
寡 カ

Yes, you can determine a lot by context but with kanji it speeds up the process considerably and makes it easier to understand compounds even if you haven't seen them before.

[Anonymous No.]

Sowhyexactlydospacesexistitmaysoundpettybutisn'titafuckloadmoreworktohavetoconstantlyhitspacebarImea
nItypereallyfastwhenIdon'thavetoandall

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250792
a i space vs a i

Nope.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250792
space space space space enter

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250757
No spacing in japanese language+No kanji+10 words means the same shit = good luck reading this shit. Sure the Japanese language could get some reforms but who am I to say that and introduce myself in this?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250792
>>6250800
Okay, fine, hiragana takes one more.

...uh, five more, actually. At least with my IM.

[Anonymous No.]

Take all of the Latin root words out of a Romantic language and see where that leaves it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250803
Kana and spaces was proposed over 100 years ago. It was shot down because of the status quo.

Currently the Japanese enjoy having a language that"foreigners can't become fluent in" because of all the little subtitles and kanji and shit, and want to enjoy their cool kid's club.

[Anonymous No.]

Aren't Japanese writing stuff in kana more and more often though? Maybe they realize that most countries in the world write out their words phonetically and use the spacebar, and people from those countries can still type fast without wasting space. Maybe Japan is slowing moving towards change?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250810
You mean kanji, right?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250821
No, I mean hiragana.

Actually, it changes depending on what I wrote recently, so now it's one more stroke for kanji. But the defaults were apparently putting あい on sixth place for that syllable combination.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250827
Your IME is completely fucked up.

[Anonymous No.]

Reading kanji is a lot quicker and more fun than reading hiragana (And the Latin syllabary for that matter)

Choose one:

1. I can write more easily but it would be more work for my readers.

2. I can write more carefully and it will be less work for my readers.

Which would you choose?

Think of it this way: if you're writing for more than one person you're actually saving time over all with kanji if you make the reading faster at sacrifice of the writing speed. Please keep in mind because of proof reading you yourself will always count as a reader as well as writer.

[Anonymous No.]

喋れないのによくも勝手に文句を言えるか

[Anonymous No.]

Why do you people keep making these fucking threads if you don't know the first thing about the Japanese language?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250852
They think that if they complain on the internet they won't have to learn Kanji and Japan will conform for them.

[Anonymous No.]

漢字を勉強しなければ日本人に成らない

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250783
可 to me is more along the lines of an "-able" suffix. So kawaii would translate to "lovable" which is pretty close to cute. You could make the case that lovable is similar to possible love, I suppose.

[Anonymous No.]

it'slikereadingthingswithoutspaces.It'snotimpossiblebutit'dbeeasierwithspaces.

[Anonymous No.]

Kanji is stupid. That's why the Koreans said fuck that shit about 800 years ago. "We don't speak Chinese." "You're right, we don't." "Let's use our own damn alphabet."

And that is about the most intelligent thing they've done to date.

[Anonymous No.]

I always use mou/もう as an example.
網
猛
毛
盲
蒙
耗
亡
望
孟
妄

mo/も
喪
藻
裳
摸
模
母
茂

All pronounced the same way but mean different things.

[Anonymous No.]

I'm pretty sure most native English speakers can already read and recognize English words at the same speed as kanji, so it doesn't really make a difference. Who the fuck reads each individual letter in a word? Only elementary schoolers do that.

We've memorized word shapes so it's already instant recognition as if you were reading kanji. I read them both at the same speeds. The only thing I don't like about kanji is the tedious as fuck writing speed, other than that it's pretty much a godsend since reading Japanese without them gives me a headache.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250871
So learn Korean.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250874
I did, unfortunately.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250864
Right, -able as in an action which is possible to do.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250883
are we still on 可? at this rate it'll take you another week to talk about 不.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250873
Thanks to the nonsense that is English spelling.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250887
No need to be touchy there Mr. Japanese Master.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250873
>I'm pretty sure most native English speakers can already read and recognize English words at the same speed as kanji,

No. Comparable maybe, not not same speed.

[Anonymous No.]

Same reason different spellings of the same sounding word exist. Plane vs plain for example. I don't know why fucktards can't realize this.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250873
I've only memorized a couple hundred, but I can definitely say that it doesn't matter either way. You gotta learn it if you're gonna read Jap, so deal with it. It's probably gonna be phased out eventually, though, much like how Korean only uses it in headlines and formal stuff. You could understand Jap sentences all in kana because you'd understand the context and wouldn't get those homonyms mixed up. Do you have any idea how many meanings the word "take" has? Or "charge"? You don't get "I'm gonna charge it to my card." confused with "Take charge." No, you instantly understand its meaning. But reading it isn't all that difficult either. Why do we write $100 instead of one-hundred dollars? Hmm? See, it doesn't matter.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250908
>It's probably gonna be phased out eventually, though,

Everything will eventually be phased out. Contemporary English for example is just that: contemporary. Kanji will be around much longer than you will be though, I guarantee that.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250916
I'm immortal, fuck you.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250916
I never said otherwise.

You'd think the Chinese woulda figured out how to make some kinda alphabet in 5000 years of history, though. "We can invent a fucking compass, but ABC is something that never crossed our minds."

[Ｋ１０ ～之～ 无名氏 No.]

>>6250923
>alphabet is master race
oh boy here we go again

[Anonymous No.]

herpaderp my dumb ass failed at learning Japanese so I'm gonna blame the language and not myself because it's easier on my ego to do so.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250923
It's not like an alphabet is inherently better. It's advantage is that it's modular so it works with computers and limited input mediums better.

Japan for example has one of the highest literacy rates in the world so it's certainly not hampering them there.

[Anonymous No.]

Your alphabet isn't as great as you think it is. Try something more efficient.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250925

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250929
Japan for example has one of the highest CLAIMED literacy rates in the world so it's certainly not hampering them there.

FTFY

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250936
Yes, literacy rates are claimed.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250936
>FTFY
When did this come into use? I had to google this fucking acronym. I aggravated.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250916
Maybe but we're also going to see usable, web-based translation software within our lifetime. Practically 100% guaranteed.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250929
Too bad bout that low birth-rate, college grads unable to get jobs and high suicide rate. Good for you guys for learning to read, though.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250930
>efficient
Nope. Try hangul if you want to talk about slick orthographies for phonic alphabets.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250923
>An alphabet is a standardized set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which roughly represents a phoneme in a spoken language
>represents a phoneme in a spoken language

You'd think the English woulda figured out how to make some kinda alphabet

[Anonymous No.]

niwaniwaniwatoriimasu.

That's why kanji is necessary.

[Anonymous No.]

Every thread like this always turns out this way :

>BAWWWWW why do the Japanese don't use our alphabet, why don't they write everything in English so I don't have to make any effort to learn anything BAWWWW.

[Anonymous No.]

ＨＡＮＧＵＬ　ＩＳ　ＭＡＳＴＥＲ　ＲＡＣＥ

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250947
Don't think of it as an acronym. Think of it as a pictograph.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250951
You think what you described only exists in Japan ? And that is because of kanji ?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250952
another korling maybe? I'm so excited! Hangul lesson? Hangul lesson.

If ya wanna talk about awesome meshing of letters, then this is it.

ㅎ=H ㅏ=A ㄴ=N ㄱ=G ㅡ=U and ㄹ=L
한글=HANGUL

Fuck yea!

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250972
I came.

[CAPS STUCK !crWyL8nC0w No.]

>>6250972
KOREAN IS THE SHIT. I STARTED LOOKING INTO LEARNING IT A FEW MONTHS AGO, AND THE ONLY THING KEEPING ME FROM LEARNING IT IS THAT I DON'T REALLY HAVE A USE FOR IT. IT LOOKS FUN AS HELL TO LEARN THOUGH..

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250984
Take up Starcraft.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250984
You obviously have some sort of a use for Japanese. Well, for watching anime and liking the stuff over yonder. Korean and Japanese are basically the same. As far as grammar goes anyways. You learn one, then you just have to learn the vocab for the other.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250990
That's what I was going to say. Learn hangul, become a starcraft player, become a zerg, get money and bitches.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250972
>another korling maybe?

Nah, I'm just a linguaphile so I respect Hangul as one of the better orthographies.

That said I also like sino-characters a lot, so whenever I see someone bashing kanji it gets on my nerves. Kanji+Kana is actually really fun to use.

I mean seriously, it's only a handful of characters/radicals put together in different ways. It's not like every sino-character was made in solitude and uniquely.

[Anonymous No.]

It's actually easier with the kanji, when you don't the language well yet.
My vocabulary is limited, and if I see something like つきさす, I won't know what's that supposed to mean unless I infer it from the context or something. On the other hand with kanji the meaning of 突き刺す is pretty obvious, and it's easy reading it as well. Kanji reduce the workload of checking words with the dictionary immensely. There are many more examples like that. It's especially true for the majority of kun'yomi verbs, but you can sometimes understand the meanings of `on'yomi words` as well without actually reading them.
In English or other European languages it's more difficult to read native materials while learning, since you have to check the words more often and the word components have much less inherent meaning.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6251001
Agreed. I made the post earlier about it not really mattering, but while studying Korean I learned the hanja/kanji and I can easily read signs in Japanese, so it's kinda neat.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250972

To be honest, Korean handwriting is from a practical standpoint light years ahead of Japanese. Kanji would be awesome if most of them consisted of squished-up kana, so that you could at least fucking read them even if you didn't know all the meanings that the form could have. Like furigana, only better.

If Japanese normally used spaces like most other written language then they could pretty much get by writing with just kana for the most part with a few minor adjustments.

Then again Japanese is a serious contender for worst written language in the world, so that's not difficult when even a normally fucked-up written language like English outclasses it.

On a somewhat-related note of language efficiency, the Diet briefly considered changing their written language shortly after WWII to make it not suck so much, or to even an English-style writing system, a bit like how the Flips mostly use a Latin-based alphabet now. That notion unsurprisingly got shot down in flames though due to nationalism. Their insistence on doing things the arbitrary "Japanese way" is coming back to bite them in the ass, that's why their business world is now completely out of touch with the way the world works now; their banking system is basically a closed-loop etc. As much as there are some cool things about Japan, as a whole they are FUCKING retards in other ways.

Check this shit out.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10543126

[Anonymous No.]

>>6251065
>Kanji would be awesome if most of them consisted of squished-up kana

Please never talk again.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6251065
Same shit happened during Meiji, roman alphabets, spaces, etc.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6251065
It has nothing to do with kanji though. And doing things "the Japanese way" made them climb to the place of second richest country in the world in only a few dozen years despite having been nuked and bombed, invaded by American soldiers, having their economy completely destroyed, living on a tiny island with no natural ressources, etc...

[Anonymous No.]

>>6251065
At least money actually exists in Japan.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6251077
I haven't spoken it weeks, I'm only typing. deal w/ it

[Anonymous No.]

Kanji is essential and easy.

OP is a faggot.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250947
I haven't heard of a worse acronym since PMSL. This should only be used by 13 year olds.

[Anonymous No.]

[Anonymous No.]

Can't we all agree that logographic languages in general are inferior and something that only cavemen would use.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6251591
Yes

[Anonymous No.]

>>6251591
>>6251594

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250757

It might be more complicated to write, but reading it is quicker (it's easier to tell at a glance what a word it is without having to work out how all those annoying letters are supposed to fit together).

Also paper space.

[Anonymous No.]

Kanji exists because China exists.

感謝 - My thanks in Japanese
謝謝 - Thank you in Chinese

I've been in China for about 2 months now. Little children have no problem writing Kanji. There is no hiragana or katakana.

Fuck, Hiragana and Katakana are just simplified Kanji. Kanji is simply the base.

[Anonymous No.]

Mighty bump

[Anonymous No.]

>>6251610
So how do they write your name?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250757

The tradition explanation for why kanji are still used involves whining about homonyms as if Japanese is the only language that has them, but we all know that it's just because of tradition and prestige.

>>6250954

We did, 1500 years ago.

Then some faggots came along and decided we had to use the Latin alphabet, even though Latin has far fewer sounds than English.

At around the same time, some related faggots decided that Latin-derived words as well as Latin letters were better than English ones (despite Latin being such a barbaric and undeveloped language that many Romans had to write in Greek when dealing with science or philosophy), and decided to import a fuckload of them instead letting us create our own like we used to and like the Germans do now.

Naturally, everyone had the bright idea of using the etymology of words as guides to their spelling instead of their pronunciation, so English words kept sounds they had lost and foreign words were spelt according to the rules of their own language instead of ours.

There you go, a massively oversimplified explanation of why our spelling system is so fucked up.

[Anonymous No.]

Old famicom games were using "kana + space" style.
They seemed to be friendly to gaijins, but was terrible to native Japanese speakers, of course.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6252522
You can still get kana + space style with pokemon. But I don't get why half the stuff that shouldn't be in katakana as far as I know is in katakana.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6252475
But Latin is so religious and magical and epic

[Anonymous No.]

>>6252475
>Latin being such a barbaric and undeveloped language that many Romans had to write in Greek when dealing with science or philosophy
I fucking knew dem lawyers and doctors are up to no good

[Anonymous No.]

>>6252475
The sheer amount of loan-words that languages have gotten from English the last 40-60 years because of new technologies is kind of retarded.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6252535
But Anglo-Saxon runes are more so.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6252587
And most of those terms are just fabricated from Latin and Greek.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6252527
Because, formally, you shouldn't use hiragana for regular nouns and adjectives. If for some reason you can't use kanji (either you don't know it or the target demographic doesn't know it) you use katakana.

[Anonymous No.]

because China is that awesome, that's why.

[Anonymous No.]

kanji = fail

korea and roman alphabets = win

[Anonymous No.]

>>6252737
roman alphabet lols

[Anonymous No.]

Just admit you guys don't like kanji because the truth is that you can't remember them due to having a peanut size brain or dumber than a monkey.

repeat this chant to learn kanji succesfully without effort:

KUCSMAI-KUCSMAI-KUCSMAI-KUCSMAI-KUCSMAI

[Anonymous No.]

A better question would be "why does katakana exist".
Seriously, it's like its only purpose is to fuck up their English (or whatever other language) pronunciation.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6252765
>KUCSMAI
>I AM SCUK
Could you be more retarded?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250757
The Japanese writing system wasn't created to be functional and easy for the people, but to be used by pretentious nobles and wise men to boast their cultural penis.
Hey look at my soft lines and gentle curves, I'm so gracious even my writing is an harmony of ink and paper !... fucking japs...

[Anonymous No.]

originally all asians before the splits into countries used the language of the yellow emperor, then came chinese as they split Japan first used Chinese characters to write japanese language around the writing of the nihonji. by the time the kojiki was written they had their own charaters. It's evolution of language by separation from others who use it it changes as it gets passed on. so it was in the western world where Sumer became hebrew, greek and latin became middle french, castillian, and germanic became english which became ebonics.

Asians actually diversified LESS then whites in this sense.

[Pestilence !!vKqWKxLMglQ No.]

Funny how these threads always fail to realize that the Japanese writing system (well Chinese if you only factor in kanji) was never developed with foreign learners in mind.

They can be quite tangled and harder to learn due to their complexity than most logographics or alphabets if you've never gotten past the first 100-200 kanji. But modern Japanese kids and studious non-native learners have no problems learning them. In fact, anyone who's gotten past 1000 kanji can attest to the fact that they're irreplaceable and actually speeds up the reading process a lot if you know plenty of kanji.

So where exactly do these complaints stem from? My guess would be that it's those lazy people who can't seem to wrap their minds around the idea that there are no shortcuts for learning kanji.

Learn to love kanji.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6252794
People also learn to climb mountains and fly aircrafts with effort, the difference is that something like a fucking alphabet should easy and intuitive, Kanji is a mess and anyone protecting that is only trying to justify all the time he lost learning that bullshit.
Finally our own language isn't different from Kanji, only we call our own Words and we *GASP* CAN READ THEM and call upon our auditory memory as well instad of just staring at runes and hope we can recall that particular shape and discern it from another in a 5k list.

[Anonymous No.]

>The tradition explanation for why kanji are still used involves whining about homonyms as if Japanese is the only language that has them
There's subtle difference between "having homonyms" and "having a LOT of homonyms". You can't apply boolean logic to everything in life.

[Anonymous No.]

as multiple posters have said, Kanji makes things so much fucking easier to read, the problem is just that it's a pain to learn them in the first place. Or even if you don't know them, but it's in the form of computer text, it's easier to look up than a mess of hiragana. (admittedly, handwritten kanji is a bitch to look up, especially if the handwriting is sloppy)

When I'm reading an untranslated VN the worst thing for me to run into is a gigantic string of hiragana that I have to slowly read through and attempt to parse. Hiragana works if you're already fluent in the spoken language (such as Japanese children using hiragana until they learn the kanji) but it's slower since you basically have to sound everything out in your head, instead of just instantly recognizing 1 or 2 characters. Hiragana words are just NOT easily recognizable like Latin alphabet words; everyone knows about how you can misspell all the words in an English paragraph and still be able to understand everything, try doing that with hiragana (even with spaces between each word) and it would be gibberish even to a native speaker.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6252825
Even if the compound contains new kanji, I can learn the meaning and how to read a japanese word just as fast as I could learn the meaning of a french/german/english/whatever word.

Kanji hardly requires any time investment unless you want to become a calligrapher or have some other need for handwriting.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6252825
>we call our own Words and we *GASP* CAN READ THEM and call upon our auditory memory as well

What's your native language? Because it sure as hell isn't English.

[Pestilence !!vKqWKxLMglQ No.]

>>6252825
>the difference is that something like a fucking alphabet should easy and intuitive
Kanji aren't alphabet.

>Kanji is a mess
Kanji aren't a mess. There are exceptions to rules like in every other language, but kanji are MOSTLY logical.

>anyone protecting that is only trying to justify all the time he lost learning that bullshit.
How can a time spent on learning new and exciting language on your leisure time be useless?

>we *GASP* CAN READ THEM
Oh, nevermind. You're looking at the issue from foreigner's point of view. As I mentioned earlier, kanji pose little difficulty for natives (due to immersion) and studious learners.

>5k list.
Judging from this, you aren't even studying kanji. What makes you entitled to comment on something you've no experience of?

If anything, you should complain about the vocabulary and compound words. Kanji are piss easy compared to them.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6252737
except they mean the same thing dumbass

[Anonymous No.]

>>6252750
except they mean the same thing dumbass

[Anonymous No.]

Do chinks have an easier time learning Japanese because most Kanji have similar meanings?

or does it actually make it harder?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6252967
>chinks
racist

[Anonymous No.]

>>6252967
My Chinese friend can read a decent amount of Japanese and make sense of some sentences, this girl I know supposedly learned the Kanji easily because she took Chinese(She know takes Japanese now and is doing quite well).

[Anonymous No.]

I'm pretty sure the number of words in the English language that do not follow its pronunciation rules (as far as they exist) exceeds the 2000 of kanji you need to know in order to read the large majority of written Japanese. So for each of these words you need to learn a sequence of semi-arbitrary glyphs and assign a pronunciation and meaning to it in your head that you can't derive from its spelling. How is this better than kanji again?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253007
I'm pretty sure you're wrong.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6252967
I imagine it's roughly the same with western languages.

Fluency in one Romance language makes learning the other ones much easier. Fluency in English makes German easier and vice versa. Knowledge in Latin primarily and Greek secondarily will further aid your ability to decode unknown western languages for the most part.

I'm not sure whether Greek and Russian have a similar relationship, as I've never even attempted to look at Greek, though I know that Russian and Ukrainian are practically the same thing, much like German and Dutch.

As for Basque...that language doesn't share a root with anything, so they gotta do things the hard way.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253007
>>6253052
The average person knows roughly 20,000 words of his or her language. A highly literate person can know upwards of 80,000.

I'm fairly sure there are more than 2,000 English words that defy spelling conventions, and I know for a fact that many of the rules of pronunciation we follow are badly outdated.

Now, I'm not out of those phonetic-spelling assholes, but there are just some things that don't make much sense. For example "gh" = "f", I can see that being more relevant the closer to the original German you get, but nowadays "gh" would intuitively be pronounced "g" or "guh".

It's cool if we keep the old spellings - changing them all would be a bitch and a half anyway - but we could do with a touch of standardization to further streamline our language.

After all, English isn't a language of beauty or nuance, it's a language of cold, dry business.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253056
>practically the same thing, much like German and Dutch.
Trust me, they really aren't. Well I can read German pretty fluently, but it really doesn't seem to work the other way around.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6252967
I'm Chinese and fluent in Mandarin and yes, it does make things quite a bit easier if I'm just reading VNs or manga. Nearly every single word I've come across means the same thing or extremely close to what I think it means.

If I see kanji I don't know the onyomi or kunyomi to, then I can just guess what it means and most of the time (~90%), I'm right.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253112
So what's it like living in a country that still has no respect for human rights and throws you in jail the minute you dare criticize the fascist government in any way?

[Anonymous No.]

한국어를 배울까요

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253127

>Americans believing they have legitimate views of other countries

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253127
I live in america bro. Moved here like eight years ago.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253150
Kawaii deshou~, american-djin desu baka!!!

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253127
Who gives a fuck.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253150
I'm not American. I do, however, read newspapers.
>>6253160
I don't. It's just really easy to troll Chinese people with something like that.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253127
That's easy, you just don't criticize the government.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253178
I don't think it's easy to troll people with stuff that's obviously true.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253178

>I can make a sweeping judgement on an Eastern country of 1billion people based on what I've read in Western newspapers

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253183
Are you joking? Nothing pisses people off more than truth.

The point is to find something that's sufficiently inconvenient for them. It's not as easy as it sounds.

[Anonymous No.]

fucking coreans

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253187
Uhm yes because western papers have this neat little thing called freedom of press aka freedom from censorship. Why just today China blocked CNN to prevent people from finding out about the guy that won the nobel peace prize.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253221

Because Western newspapers are completely free of bias, censorship and business/financial pressures. Oh you naive little man. Not that I'm condoning Chinese censorship, but there is no such thing as free opinions anywhere but the internet.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253221
Freedom of speech implies the right to not be factually correct.

Expecting the media to tell the truth just because they're not constrained by law is extremely stupid.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253247
>>6253243
Seriously you guys are defending freaking China? Only one party is allowed by law, it's no different from nazi Germany.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253253

A socialist (and formerly hardline communist) country previously allied with the Soviet Union is 'no different' from Nazi Germany. Okay then.

[Anonymous No.]

can we stick on the language discussion?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253253
You are a retard. Please learn to read.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253253
>comparing China to Nazi Germany
hahaohwow

[Anonymous No.]

There's not much to interpret in those greek letter, they look like gravely simplified versions of the chinese ones. Gotta be stimulating, learning a language like that.

[konakona !MpEqQLgus2 No.]

Fuck guys if your having a hard time with kanji just use Heisig's Remembering the Kanji for fucks sakes. Sure there are problems with his method here and there but if you stick too it like I did you can master all 2000 general-use characters in a month.

Its only hard if you try and study it like the Japanese did, which doesn't work because adult learners are differnt from native speakers who can spend time from 5yo-16yo learning that shit.

[Anonymous No.]

I like how these threads always invariably devolve into sub-fluent weeaboos incapable of handling criticism about Japan turning this into a pissing contest about critics not being "smart enough" for rote memorization of kanji. Like that's any kind of intellectual excercise. Are people really incapable of maturely looking at the faults of the Japanese writing system and realizing it mainly persists for political and nationalistic reasons?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253747
If cultural reasons are considered "political and nationalistic," sure.

[Anonymous No.]

I like how these threads always invariably devolve into sub-fluent idiot beginners incapable of handling facts about learning kanji turning this into a pissing contest about beginners not being "able to have any shortcuts" for rote memorization of kanji. Like that's any kind of intellectual excercise. Are people really incapable of maturely looking at the easiness of the Japanese writing system and realizing it mainly persists for good and necessary reasons?

[Anonymous No.]

>So, why exactly does kanji exist?

So Japanese people can laugh at foreigners trying to deal with them. Tru fact.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253747
yes, abolish the fucking system, which is no problemo for the natives, just because some retarded foreigners are having tough time!

there are problems in kanji

just like there problems in many other writing systems

no one is denying that.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253794
>abolish the fucking system

I don't recall saying that.

>just because some retarded foreigners are having tough time

Last I checked, the Japs themselves are having a tough time with it:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jz3FEk2KJw3NEUyDhbMlTQO0IlOw

>>6253785

Thank you for proving me correct. Try revisiting this thread when you've grown up a little.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253785
There is a certain intellectual threshold which you have to pass in order to learn kanji. This is why most people simply give up.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253803
owned nerd, how many kanji do you know? 50? thanks for proving my point

[Anonymous No.]

Kanji is fucking pointless and anyone defending it is retarded.

[Anonymous No.]

I've been wanting to learn Japanese for a while now, but I really can't seem to motivate myself to put time aside for it. I've read up on the basic grammar and I learned most of the kana. To me it seemed like an excercise in memory, and the basic structure of the language is much simpler than my native language. I actually think the Japanese are at at a disadvantage when trying to learn foreign languages, since theirs has a relatively simple structure.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253803
>Some argue that the perceived decline in character knowledge is, in fact, nothing to worry about.

>A survey by the southern Chinese news portal Dayang Net, found that 80 percent of respondents had forgotten how to write some characters -- but 43 percent said they used handwritten characters only for signatures and forms.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253807

No, there really isn't. There are plenty of stupid people in both China and Japan, just like in any other society. They aren't superhuman, it's just rote memorization, immersion and attrition. It's an accomplishment in the sense of having perserved in a sustained effort for something. Memorizing characters isn't an intellectual achievement, though, and that seems to stopping half the people in this thread from having a level-headed discussion about the subject.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253813

I'm not an RTKfag and I have no idea how many kanji I know. Did you just call someone a nerd on /jp/? Are you retarded?

>>6253821

I don't know what your greentexting and /v/ meme image macro is trying to communicate. That quote supports the overall conclusion of the article. Perhaps you'd like to elaborate.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253828
Then explain why you only know max 300 kanji, and why have people stopped from learning Japanese because of kanji? They don't like "memorization"?

>They aren't superhuman, it's just rote memorization, immersion and attrition.
Well they sure aren't. But you can't compare us to them. They're getting taught from the moment they enter school and they're fairly immersed. Of course they'd learn them even if they didn't want.

>and that seems to stopping half the people in this thread from having a level-headed discussion about the subject.
Many people in this thread have acknowledged its down-sides while praising the up-sides.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253835
dude, i used to be like you, until i got the hang of them

now your just BAWWWWING

shut up!

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253842
>Then explain why you only know max 300 kanji,

Firstly, you don't know how many kanji I "know" any better than I do, and you're doing an especially poor job of not dragging this into a dickwaving of contest of the sort I mentioned above.

Secondly:

Kanji are used most commonly as morphemes. Studying them in isolation is retarded, as is claiming to 'know' them. What do people mean by 'knowing' kanji?

Knowing how to write them? Useless to a foreigner unless you live in Japan.

Knowing their broad overall meaning(s)? EDICT usually gives a half dozen often disparate suggestions for each, and they all tend to fall apart or become extremely obtusely applied in the context of actual words, setting aside even obvious examples like ateji.

Pronunctiation? There's usually two or three On readings at minimum on top of native Japanese words as well as the occasional anomolies that derive from neither. Totally unreliable and unworth studying in isolation.

Exhaustively knowing all the various combinations and okurigana comprising actual Japanese words? This is surely the most accomplished if not immediately practical path as it actually constitutes learning the language instead of simply dickwaving arbitrary numbers on the Internet, but I don't think anyone who counts the number of kanji they know to a semi-finite value actually does this.

So that leaves the conclusion that counting the number of kanji you 'know' is actually vacuous wankery and hardly related to measuring one's understanding of the language at all. So why do these threads keep happening?

>Many people in this thread have acknowledged its down-sides while praising the up-sides.

Most haven't, and you seem to be among those reacting the worst.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253857
oh i remember this retard and copypaste from the RTK thread

enjoy whining and "criticizing" when you could spend the time learning some more hanzi nerd

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253857
Shut your face I know 1649 kanji.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253857
No. I can smell it from far away. I don't even need to ask you how many kanji you know. You don't know shit.

People who know lots have gotten past the "kanji are so stupid and unneeded!" phase because they've long since accepted and embraced what little problems kanji pose.

Speaking of criticizing, how about you bring something new on the table instead of chanting the old assmongery?

>a dickwaving of contest
You bet.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253850

I'm not convinced you do have the hang of them. From your posts, you don't sound terribly bright. I enjoy memorizing kanji compounds and I'm not having any particular trouble with it, and yet somehow it doesn't preclude me from making a causual observation that "hey, this is maybe a little impractical".

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253857
I'm going to kindly disagree with you sir. Knowing a general meaning of what each individual kanji means is a huge stepping stone in learning how to use the language. It might not help you a huge amount by itself, but it certainly isn't a worthless contribution to learning Japanese as a whole. Forgive me for saying, but you're quite ignorant.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253850
>now your just
>your
Really?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253878
>terribly bright
WaTTT didnt you just say that studying kanji dont have nothing to do with intelligence??? lol man

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253875
>No. I can smell it from far away. I don't even need to ask you how many kanji you know. You don't know shit.

There's nothing I can do stop you from internalizing ideas that originated in your own head. It suits your own beliefs and arguments to think that, and beyond all reason and substantiation you will. Can't be helped. Won't argue it further because I'm too lazy and it can't be proven one way or the other.

>People who know lots have gotten past the "kanji are so stupid and unneeded!" phase because they've long since accepted and embraced what little problems kanji pose.

The opening introduction of the grammar textbook I studied from (An Introduction to Modern Japanese by Richard Bowring and Haruko Uryuu Laurie), which was penned by a University of Cambridge professor, remarked on end how complicated the Japanese writing system was versus all others and contained a number of quotes and citations. Even if one finds it easy it still vstly more effort invested versus any other language, and there's quite a lot of room for improvement.

>Speaking of criticizing, how about you bring something new on the table instead of chanting the old assmongery?

I won't, because no one has ever refuted any of that.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253889

That's right, I'm following your own line of logic.

Really, go back to /v/. Your English is terrible and you don't speak Japanese. You're bad at this, you'll have better luck over there.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253917
>>6253917
yes i will go to /v/ now good sir. thank you sir for admonishing me :((

bye bye xD

俺のダブルを見てて

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253886

遺伝子型

い (ON) Bequeath
でん (ON) Report
し (ON) Child
がた　(KUN) mould

= "genotype"

You can't piece together the definitions of words from individual fragments. It doesn't work in English and it doesn't work in Japanese. All Chinese characters offer is a foundation for building new vocabulary and a consistent etymology. You can't reliably "read" them as if they were their own low-level language. They're not. And it's something you'll pick up intuitively anyhow, as you need it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253941
Most jukugo can be figured out from their component kanji. I still don't agree with you. I agree with learning the building blocks of a language from the ground up. It is the compound words that you will learn as you go. It's easiest for me that way. I won't speak for others.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253941
遺伝子
gene; genetic

型
type

=

遺伝子型
genotype

With some (VERY many), yes you can.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253948
>遺伝子

So you study ON-readings in clusters of three?

[Anonymous No.]

遺
bequeath

伝
transmit, report

子
child

= gene; genetic

--------------------------------

遺伝子
genetic

型
type

=

遺伝子型
genotype

With some (VERY many), yes you can. And it's much easier than you give it credit.

For example:

童
child

話
tale (heisig..) or talk

=

童話
fairy-tale

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253956
The list goes on. I won't even bother listing them but most compound words do make sense and you can guess the meaning just like that.

Maybe one more:

出
exit, leave

血
blood

=

出血
bleeding; hermorrhage

[Anonymous No.]

日本語で論議しろ。それだけを出来ないのでお前の意見は重要じゃない。

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253956
>童話

I'd read {child}-{talk} as "baby talk" or "childish speaking" before I'd come up with "Fairy tale". Maybe that's just me.

You also have the advantage of hindsight here. You can cherry-pick the relevant meanings having already know the word in question. With no knowledge of the word in advcane, 遺伝子型 is more like.

遺 {bequeath} {leave behind} {reserve}

伝 {transmit} {go along} {walk along} {follow} {report} {communicate} {legend} {tradition}

子{child} {sign of the rat} {11PM-1AM} {first sign of Chinese zodiac}

型 {mould} {type} {model}

With the kun reading at the end, guessing at the word based on ON readings will throw you off as well.

>遺
>bequeath

>伝
>transmit, report

>子
>child

>= gene; genetic

You couldn't have reasonably guessed that on first seeing the word.

[Anonymous No.]

Kanji threads are so trollish, i bet most of the people in here don't know much beyond "ore wa nippon"

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253966

I think I articulate myself better in English, thank you.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253987
However when you learn that the two component kanji mean "fairytail" I doubt you'll forget the meaning of the compound easily. Like I said, it's a stepping stone. Are you advocating learning the kanji as compounds? Do you honestly believe most people will be able to wrap their arms around such a concept? Seeing each kanji in the compound for the first time. To me, it's a huge disadvantage to leave such gaps in the learning process. Maybe because I don't have a photographic memory. I'm a more simple learner.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253987

You also have context to help you. And cases where a kun reading appears like that are the minority.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253991
俺はガンダムだ！

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254011

It's my prefered method. To each his own, though. I've discussed this in other threads and I'm a little weary of it.

I was more interested in discussing the overall faults and advantages of the Japanese writing system, but it seems most of /jp/ can't handle interrupting their self-congratulating circle-jerk for that.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254031

You should shut up about it already, because it's a shitty method.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254043

You seem upset.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254051

Fuck you, enjoy your shit method asshole

[Anonymous No.]

Kanji trolling. Still alive and well in the year 2010.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254016
He actually used が, not は.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254063

I said it works for me, you cunt. Hey buddy, how about I shove my fat, unwashed choad down your fucking throat and you enjoy that, you cock-riding faggot? Eat shit.

[Anonymous No.]

So, why exactly does hiragana exist?

It may sound petty, but isn't it a fuckload more work to write out words in hiragana when romaji would be shorter? This is a serious question, wouldn't it be more practical to write that which lakes less time?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254077
Any trolling works on /jp/; it doesn't matter how old and uneffective it is on other boards.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254114
>So why do capital letters exist?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6253928
http://archive.easymodo.net/cgi-board.pl/jp/image/JfG0v7y7pYla93OgZXYP3g

>>6253747
>>6253803
>>6253828
>>6253835
>>6253857
>>6253878
>>6253907
>>6253917
>>6253941
>>6253987
>>6254004
>>6254031
>>6254051
>>6254091
http://archive.easymodo.net/cgi-board.pl/jp/thread/5886028#p5886417

Busted.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254125

That's a little frightening you remembered that thread.

[Anonymous No.]

[Anonymous No.]

So if the Japanese prefer kanji because it compacts the sentence and allows for quicker reading, then why don't English-speaking nations take more kindly to using internet speak in formal, academic, and professional settings?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254510
Because they are not 13, and it would be poor form.

[Anonymous No.]

Japan here.
Honestly, not writing Kanji and writing only Hiragana or Katakana is hard to read.
It's just like....writing English sentence without inserting any space.

あと漢字は表意文字だからその熟語を知らなくてもおおよその意味の検討が
つくとか、ひらがな語より雰囲気を出せるとか書こうと思ったけど英訳面
倒くさい。

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254532
It's actually even harder since japanese is written phonetically, while english is not.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254532
Fuck you japan

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254510
Internet speak takes things from more concise to less concise. Kanji takes something from less concise to more concise. When something is more precise it takes less cognitive processing and thus time to understand it.

[Anonymous No.]

ははははははははのはははははははとわらう

[Anonymous No.]

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254598
Clever

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254598
>>6254622
Samefag

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254630
THIS. Epic samefag catch.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254622
It's not, really

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254630
>>6254640

Samefag

>>6254598
Stolen from /a/.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254079
I know, I just felt like using は instead because ORE WA NIPPON.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6252475

So the Latin alphabet is to English what Kanji are to Japanese?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254754

Uh, no. Japan started with kanji. They never had an original writing system of their own. They first took kanji from the Chinese and tried writing Japanese in it according to the phonetic sounds of the kanji and assigning the kun readings to semantically similar kanji. Then they realized how powerfully retarded and unsuited to an agglutinative language this was and developed hiragana for inflections and other okurigana as a sloppy kludge over the Chinese writing system.

Basically it was a clusterfuck from day zero.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6250867
English words are longer than Japanese counterparts.

More correct analogy would be like

t'slkrdngthngswthtspcsndvwls.t'sntmpssiblbtit'dbsrwithspcsndvwls.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254809

Jesus Christ, why are people so hellbent on believing Japanese has some kind of magical whitespace obliterating property?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254820
You still mad?

[Anonymous No.]

Japanese abuses the Chinese writing system the way English abuses the Latin alphabet.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6254889

Pretty much.

[Anonymous No.]

Thatspacesareneededinanylanguaje