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+--- Thread: Looking for all-kana readers (/thread-6018.html)
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Looking for all-kana readers - yudantaiteki - 2010-07-14
Mushi Wrote:We don't know for sure because we don't have any contemporary manuscripts of Genji, but probably not. No surviving manuscript of the Tale is written in all hiragana. There's no doubt that Heian writing (of Japanese) used, in general, a much higher proportion of kana than modern texts, but it's unlikely that the entire thing was written without any kanji being used. Women weren't supposed to know Chinese, but it's clear that many of them learned it anyway, and we know that Murasaki Shikibu in particular knew Chinese quite well.oregum Wrote:Becausejapanesedoesn'thavespacesinbetweenwordssoyou'llprobablyendupreadingabunchofjibberishandmissoutontheflowofthelanguage.Wasn't A Tale of Genji entirely in hiragana? (Not that there's any chance I'd ever be able to read it in its native form.)
(Also note that oregum's sentence is perfectly comprehensible to a native speaker of English despite the lack of spaces.)
Looking for all-kana readers - Thora - 2010-07-14
ydtt, comprehensible, but more difficult to read, no? It's not a question of impossibility. Imagine an entire novel like that. Mentally tiring because we're less able to rely on word shape recognition and it's easier to lose our place. It'd be complete drag for a beginner ESL learner, I'd imagine.
Looking for all-kana readers - pm215 - 2010-07-14
I think it's hard to say -- I find the no-spaces sentence a little harder to read, but I suspect a lot of that is simply because I've had decades of practice reading with-spaces English text. If all text was written without spaces, would we have difficulty? The Old Roman Cursive script used in the Vindolanda tablets only marked word divisions sometimes, not consistently, for instance, and I'm sure there are other examples of alphabetic/syllabic scripts which don't mark word boundaries -- if spacing was that important I imagine it would be introduced much more quickly.
Looking for all-kana readers - Thora - 2010-07-14
pm215, yes, it is a matter of practice. It's just not something we really need to spend time practicing because it isn't necessary. I suspect it might involve a bit more brain work because our eyes don't move in linear fashion when we read and it'd be harder to scan, relocate and recognize patterns in such dense text. In addition to word shape recognition.
Aijin Wrote:It isn't true that kana is difficult for anyone to read, though. ... native speakers should have no problem whatsoever with kana. If confronted with a big block of kana people might be "blah" about it, but if they try to read it there should be no real issue in comprehension.Perhaps "difficult" wasn't the most accurate word. Studies have shown that native speakers' speed and comprehension decrease when reading all kana. Their eyes dart around in weirder ways. And their brains light up differently. Audio presumably presents no difficulty, they simply aren't accustomed to reading all kana. With enough practise, they can increase both speed and comprehension.
This is partly why I think learners needn't spend much time on it. We need to know the kana and their correct pronunciations in words and get some minimal amount of practice reading them. Beyond that, reading is best improved while getting used to the typical kanji/kana mix, imo.
The studies aimed at showing how practice would improve native readers ability to read all kana suggest an underlying general assumption that people will perform worse when reading all kana. I had imagined it was only an assumption b/c I couldn't imagine where people would have encountered full all-kana adult texts. What kana texts did you have in mind?
Quote:Through childhood you learn to get by reading kana just fineI realize this was bit tongue in cheek, but I just want to emphasize that the comparison isn't very relevant to adult 2L learners. (it sometimes gets offered in all seriousness as an equivalent situation.)
Looking for all-kana readers - pm215 - 2010-07-14
Thora Wrote:I couldn't imagine where people would have encountered full all-kana adult textsProbably not what either you or Aijin had in mind, but the short story in the PDF linked to in the translation prize thread is kana-only for the first two thirds of its length (with bonus misspellings)...
Looking for all-kana readers - yudantaiteki - 2010-07-14
Thora Wrote:ydtt, comprehensible, but more difficult to read, no? It's not a question of impossibility. Imagine an entire novel like that. Mentally tiring because we're less able to rely on word shape recognition and it's easier to lose our place. It'd be complete drag for a beginner ESL learner, I'd imagine.Of course, spaces are much better.
Looking for all-kana readers - Thora - 2010-07-14
pm215 Wrote:... the short story in the PDF linked to in the translation prize thread is kana-only for the first two thirds of its length (with bonus misspellings)...oh yeah, I recall you guys talking about that. I think you said hiragana was used to represent a dog's thoughts? Sadly, I haven't read much fiction at all. Is that a common technique for child or animal characters? I'd be fine with snippets of dialogue, but I think entire pages or chapters would give me a headache. :-)
I just took a peek at it. It's not dense and with that font the overall impression I get is young and girly. It uses spaces, but perhaps that's a stylistic choice along with the misspellings?
Looking for all-kana readers - pm215 - 2010-07-14
Thora Wrote:It's the dog writing a letter, rather than its thoughts. Try writing kanji while holding the pen in your mouth and you'll see why the dog is sticking to kana :-)pm215 Wrote:... the short story in the PDF linked to in the translation prize thread is kana-only for the first two thirds of its length (with bonus misspellings)...oh yeah, I recall you guys talking about that. I think you said hiragana was used to represent a dog's thoughts? Sadly, I haven't read much fiction at all. Is that a common technique for child or animal characters?
Looking for all-kana readers - Thora - 2010-07-14
pfft
nadiatims Wrote:Everyone and their dog can use photoshop these days.edit: from an earlier thread today.
Looking for all-kana readers - Aijin - 2010-07-14
Thora Wrote:Sadly, I haven't read much fiction at all. Is that a common technique for child or animal characters? I'd be fine with snippets of dialogue, but I think entire pages or chapters would give me a headache. :-)Pure-kana isn't all too common, but variations in the amount of kana/kanji to reflect different character points of view isn't an unusual technique in writing. When writing from the point of view of children, animals, characters who are less educated, etc. kana is used more commonly in the prose to reflect the lack of education.
pm212 Wrote:I think it's hard to say -- I find the no-spaces sentence a little harder to read, but I suspect a lot of that is simply because I've had decades of practice reading with-spaces English text. If all text was written without spaces, would we have difficulty?Exactly, spaces are only easier in English because that's what we're accustomed to, and language learning is all about what one is used to. For me, I find it irritating to read Japanese with spaces, because all my life there have never been spaces. There's one textbook a student was working on, where all the dialogues had a space after each word, and when I would read it my mind would take a breath/pause after each word due to the spaces, and it took me a while to be able to read it as a flow like normal spaceless text.
Thora Wrote:realize this was bit tongue in cheek, but I just want to emphasize that the comparison isn't very relevant to adult 2L learners. (it sometimes gets offered in all seriousness as an equivalent situation.)It was tongue in cheek, but in contrast to learning to speak and listening comprehension, I believe that reading skills in a foreign language aren't learned that differently from how native children learn to read/write their language.
I often see students try to launch straight into material for adults, as they want to mirror what they read in their native language, but one cannot simply start off with the most difficult material. In that case it's simply tediously-slow decoding rather than reading. Children advance their reading skills through the gradual increase in difficulty and gaining familiarization with each step along the way, something many adults neglect.
There aren't really that many great graded-reader resources for English speakers learning Japanese, and I think that children's books are a wonderful resource.
When I learn a foreign language, I personally try to mirror the reading process of children, beginning with material such as picture books, then children's text books, books for teenagers, then finally adult novels and the like. That technique has always worked wonderfully for me at least.
Looking for all-kana readers - cracky - 2010-07-14
Thora Wrote:I think it is, I've seen it a lot in manga and games. Children's speech usually has less kanji in it, with some of the words that were kanji when adults said them as kana. I assumed that the reason for this was because the children didn't have a full understanding of the usage of the word, and to show that they were just mimicking it.pm215 Wrote:... the short story in the PDF linked to in the translation prize thread is kana-only for the first two thirds of its length (with bonus misspellings)...oh yeah, I recall you guys talking about that. I think you said hiragana was used to represent a dog's thoughts? Sadly, I haven't read much fiction at all. Is that a common technique for child or animal characters?
EDIT: Oh Aijin already mentioned it, oops.
Looking for all-kana readers - gfb345 - 2010-07-14
oregum Wrote:Becausejapanesedoesn'thavespacesinbetweenwordssoyou'llprobablyendupreadingabunchofjibberishandmissoutontheflowofthelanguage.I'd be ecstatic if I could read a string of kana as well as I can read this (supposedly hard-to-read) string. I'm nowhere near this level.
Thora Wrote:The OP asked about software to convert regular Japanese to all-kana (ie no spaces).My interest is in learning to read kana fluently: I don't see why this should imply a requirement to omit spaces. I'm agnostic on whether the all-kana text should include spaces or not. I'd be happy to have either.
Looking for all-kana readers - Thora - 2010-07-15
gfb345,
yuudoontneedtuubeeaabletuureedhiraganafluuentlee.andazabeegineryuushuld
havspaasezbeecuzwithasmalvoocabyuulaareeandgramaritwilbeemoordificult
tuuaidentifaiwerdz.yuuwilneedtuuserchmeneewerdzinthedicshunaarybat
woontalwaaznoowatparttuuserchfoor.hamoonimswilliikleebeeaprableminkana
oonleecanvershunsavextraxavregyuularriiting.buxfoorkidzuuzasmalervooca
byuulaareeandofenhavpikshers.aidalsopoyntowtthateevenkidzbuksuuzvoocab
wichdifersfrumwatztipicaleetattuusecundlangwajlerners.itwilbeefrastraatingand
izlarjleeawaastavyoortaim.ifyuuwertuupractisreedingliikthisfooreenuftaimyuu
wuldimpruuvyoorspeedandcampreehenshun.wulditbeeauusfulskiltuuhav.and
thisisritensortavfoneticaleeinyoornaativlangwaj.imajinnoteevenferstnooing
thewerdz.maicomentabowtspaasezwaznatbaasdonanasumpshun
abowtyoorwishez.aiwaznatsertanwetheryuuterndyoormiindtuutheishewoor
natbataidowtedit.aididasuumthoothatotherswuldhavinmiindkanawithowt
spaasezfoortuureezuns.ferst,thesaftwaarmoosthavexpeereeentswithcanverts
amungmixdtext,foormsavruubeeandkanaoonlee.aiimajinitispasibletuu
madifaithoosinoordertuuadspaasez.maabeesumbadeealredehaz.withowt
spesifaiingitthoopeepulwilasuumnospaasez.secundreezunwazthatyuuspesifaid
canvershunavreguulartextazapoozdtuugaamzoorkidzbuxwichmiitalredeecum
withspaasez.aialsowantedtuuclaarifaithedistincshunerleebeecuxtherizanaajoold
deebaatabowtthereedibiliteeavkana.itofenternsonwetheroornatherarspaasez.
andthisisparticuularleeaproopriatinyoorcaasazabeeginer.nowduumeeafaaver.
traituulukbacinthisparagrafandloocaatkwikleewaaraimenshundlukingupunnoon
voocab.fun,aa. [edit: typos haha]
Comprehensible? sure. More difficult for an ESL beginner? yup. Would both natives and ESL students get better at reading this by reading lots of it? yes. Should they?
We could write entire novels in IPA symbols to avoid irregular English spelling and phonetic transcription confusion. ESL students should be able to comprehend based on phonetics, right? Or we could experiment with some other effective methods which include: reading aloud, dictation, audio comprehension, listening-reading, audio vocabulary. Added bonus: by reading regular English, they will learn to spell at the same time. :-)
btw, a few different issues are getting a bit merged in this thread. One is effective methods to help intermediate+ readers who rely too much on kanji. Another is the use of kana-only material by beginners (incl. the question of books designed for Japanese children and spaces). I think it's worthwhile to separate the two.
Looking for all-kana readers - oregum - 2010-07-15
@Thora. Hate you for forcing me to read that. There was no reason to make it soo damn phonetic.
But, seriously, Thora is right. Sure you read my string without a problem.
Becausejapanesedoesn'thavespacesinbetweenwordssoyou'llprobablyendupreading
abunchofjibberishandmissoutontheflowofthelanguage.
But, you were already familiar with all the words. However, reading a language that you have no familiarity with would make it much more difficult because you will not know where to start, stop, or which syllables to stress and what not.
for example
BE CAU SEJAP AN ESED N'T HAV ESPACES INBE TWEEN WORDS SOY OU'LL PROB ABLY EN DUP READIN GABUNCH OF JIB BERISH AN DMISS ONT HE FLO WOFT HELAN GUAGE
Looking for all-kana readers - thurd - 2010-07-15
I can write you a paragraph of Polish without spaces and such, we'll see how much time it takes to decipher unknown language without knowing where words end
Looking for all-kana readers - Thora - 2010-07-15
Polish words end?
Wszyscyludzierodząsięwolniirównipodwzględemswejgodnościiswychpraw.Sąoni obdarzenirozumemisumieniemipowinnipostępowaćwobecinnychwduchubraterstwa.
yikes! wsz? wzgl? hmm
Looking for all-kana readers - Delina - 2010-07-15
You might try some kid's manga - Chi's Sweet Home is almost entirely kana, and Yotsubato! is mostly hiragana (the character Yotsuba herself speaks entirely in hiragana). They're probably more bang for your buck (and more likely to be available in digital format if that's what you're looking for) than "See spot run" books in Japanese.
If you're looking for "See spot run", a couple I've heard of are "Minna unchi" by Gomi Tarō and "Kaeru ga mieru" by Matsuoka Kyōko. The latter will possibly disabuse you of this notion that reading all-hiragana is good for you, once you try to decipher the fifteen thousand things that "kaeru" can mean.
But if that's what you want, give it a try! I hope my suggestions were helpful.
Looking for all-kana readers - JimmySeal - 2010-07-16
Tangentially related to this topic, but I just found out about the following book a few moments ago:
ひらがなでよめばわかる日本語