http://ajpr.com/wordpress/japanese-onlin...s-it-words

"Gairaigo or foreign words are in fact everywhere in Japan, especially so in the IT industry. Japanese see these words on TV and Internet, and hear others use them in the meetings. But, that doesn’t mean most of them know what they are. The funny thing is that according to iShare’s recent survey, nearly 80% said that they choose to go on without finding out the meaning of these words! See some of the top ranking “clueless IT words” from the survey below. This survey was focused on IT related words, but foreign words are everywhere in the life and not limited to IT industry."

The Japanese have got to stop borrowing words from other countries!!
Katakana is going to kill the language.. !!

rrrrrray Wrote:The Japanese have got to stop borrowing words from other countries!!
Katakana is going to kill the language.. !!

lol, i've thought the same thing

Don't see why...

Baroughing werds fruhm uthr langwijis hassent hurt Ienglesh in thuh slitest.

ropsta Wrote:Don't see why...

Baroughing werds fruhm uthr langwijis hassent hurt Ienglesh in thuh slitest.

I just think that Katakana is different from the English alphabets.. It takes much more effort to read if you string a bunch of them together..

rrrrrray Wrote:

ropsta Wrote:Don't see why...

Baroughing werds fruhm uthr langwijis hassent hurt Ienglesh in thuh slitest.

I just think that Katakana is different from the English alphabets.. It takes much more effort to read if you string a bunch of them together..

Probably for a learner. For a native I don't see it being any harder that sludge I typed above.

I personally believe the Kanji is there to improve the speed at which one can read Japanese. If there were no Kanji in Japanese, so all words are written in kana, even with space, it woud be a lot more difficult to read.

The thing is that a bunch of kana being thrown together doesn't create that much of a shape like the English alphabet. The fact that we can recognize English words easily is because of the shape of each word quite unique, and kana does not provide that benefit.

ropsta Wrote:

rrrrrray Wrote:

ropsta Wrote:Don't see why...

Baroughing werds fruhm uthr langwijis hassent hurt Ienglesh in thuh slitest.

I just think that Katakana is different from the English alphabets.. It takes much more effort to read if you string a bunch of them together..

Probably for a learner. For a native I don't see it being any harder that sludge I typed above.

At first I thought you wrote something in a different language and I jump to google translate immediately, LOL... until i read it again carefully.. haha..

rrrrrray Wrote:The thing is that a bunch of kana being thrown together doesn't create that much of a shape like the English alphabet. The fact that we can recognize English words easily is because of the shape of each word quite unique, and kana does not provide that benefit.

They do create shape. It's part of the reason I can read familiar katakana sequences with greater speed than unfamiliar ones, and sometimes I can recognize them immediately.

May I ask where you are getting this information from?

I reckon though it looks cool Katakana has to be one of the most retarded ways of transliterating foreign words ever, it pretty much creates regulated mispronunciations and I detest words like エクササイズ、リラックス、メーンページ because they sound bad, it's like english people saying "don't leave the "toe" open because a "kayzee" will "fuku" in. It's just baaaaaaaaaaad.

kazelee Wrote:

rrrrrray Wrote:The thing is that a bunch of kana being thrown together doesn't create that much of a shape like the English alphabet. The fact that we can recognize English words easily is because of the shape of each word quite unique, and kana does not provide that benefit.

They do create shape. It's part of the reason I can read familiar katakana sequences with greater speed than unfamiliar ones, and sometimes I can recognize them immediately.

May I ask where you are getting this information from?

I remember reading it somewhere, but I don't have the source. So i googled around and found this really long paper http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ctfo...ition.aspx

Unfortunately for me, it totally refuted the word shape model.. ='(

then, I guess it is a matter of getting used to... If Japanese were written in kana to begin with, maybe everyone would be able to read it just as fast as when Kanji is included in the language.

To put this in perspective, I'm sure at least 50% of the population in North America has no idea the difference between a hard drive and a motherboard.

To put it simply, regular people do not care about IT crap. Only nerds like us care

Here's an interesting essay: http://appling.kent.edu/ResourcePages/Co...lution.htm

Not endorsing it as a whole, and it might be from the '90s, but makes good points.

ruiner Wrote:Here's an interesting essay: http://appling.kent.edu/ResourcePages/Co...lution.htm

Not endorsing it as a whole, and it might be from the '90s, but makes good points.

Excellent essay!! The author presents some very valid points.

juniperpansy Wrote:To put this in perspective, I'm sure at least 50% of the population in North America has no idea the difference between a hard drive and a motherboard.

To put it simply, regular people do not care about IT crap. Only nerds like us care

The problem isn't really that people don't care, it's that there is a better system readily available. Especially seeing how they translated wave length or wireless, doesn't that make much more sense to use something you already have that HAS inherent meaning rather than just butcher the original pronunciation of the word and call it a day?

It seems like just tossing english words at japanese people would leave them confused, doesn't it? I don't know, perhaps by now a lot of katakana-ized words are well known and accepted etc, but I'm sure at first it was kind of confusing. Peer to Peer, properties, and memory mean something completely different to an english native than to a japanese native, right?

That article really brought up some excellent points, especially with things like stand-alone, properties, and peer to peer. I can see putting certain words into katakana but for something like peer to peer or stand alone I can't see any reason why you can't pick suitable kanji, readings for it, and throw furigana on the top just for clarification (because after all, you're coining a new, albiet logically created, word).

rrrrrray Wrote:The Japanese have got to stop borrowing words from other countries!!

You mean like China?

Matthew Wrote:

rrrrrray Wrote:The Japanese have got to stop borrowing words from other countries!!

You mean like China?

I didn't make myself clear as I am not good with words.
What I mean is exactly what the article ruiner posted has pointed out, transliteration is polluting the Japanese language.

Borrowing words from China is quite a different story than borrowing words from English as Japanese and Chinese is closely related, unlike English.

Just take "peer to peer" from the essay for example, it is "translated" to ピアツーピア, which bears no semantic meaning from just the look of the word. In Chinese, "peer to peer" is translated to "点対点". From Kanji, you can at least tell it is something from one point to another point, which is a lot clearer.