I'm noticing with subtitles, often times kanji is not used in some sentences. Is this a mistake? And should I "fix" these sentences in my srs to include the kanji? Some examples:

ホントに　バカみたい　わたし。 (Why have they omitted "本当に", "馬鹿", and "私" all from the same sentence?)

１週間分の食料が。 (why do they use "1" instead of "一"?)

Well Katakana can give a kinda emphasis feel like adding exclamation marks!!!.

Also Baka is mostly writen in katakana/hiragana isn't it? Kid's use it before they get there Kanji feet wet. but I would switch the 本当にat least.

and Numbers are easier to read. I see Kanji numbers mostly at restaurants but even then its not proper it looks like 五OO円　instead of 五百円。

Arabic numerals are used in horizontal writing, and kanji in vertical (although even there you often see ○, especially in years).

わたし is often written in kana; it may have something to do with influence from the Joyo kanji list, since わたし is not an approved reading of 私 (only わたくし is), and you're theoretically supposed to write personal pronouns in kana.

The katakana for ホント is probably for emphasis like NSTF said. But why are there spaces in it?

I usually:
# Change anything that is a noun (most of the time).
# Change things when there is just too much Kana or Kanji floating about.
# Change verbs as it gives much more meaning to them.
# Sometimes I change adjectives.
# Change names to Katakana (because it's easier to read and I don't need names).

I remember talking to my teacher talking about how I was playing a game and how I figured out how to read 馬鹿 through context.

She said something like
"Hah, of course, only a game would put that in kanji."

kainzero Wrote:She said something like
"Hah, of course, only a game would put that in kanji."

I see 馬鹿 all the time in light novels, many times without furigana.

iSoron Wrote:

kainzero Wrote:She said something like
"Hah, of course, only a game would put that in kanji."

I see 馬鹿 all the time in light novels, many times without furigana.

i think she was implying what kind of story it was in, not what kind of medium it's in.

I don't change these types of thing. I want to know the way words are used natively. Of course, this is just one example of a わたし - when you have more sentences there will be plenty of examples and gradually you'll find out how much of the time people are writing it わたし, how much 私 (which can have different pronunciations anyway). -Also I like to see what type of people are using it in different ways which I think is a good reason to leave it the way I find it.

Most probably, if I want to practise the kanji for whatever word it is, I would have to look for a sentence that uses that kanji. Or, look for more obscure material and expect to find it there after enough sentences of that type. Anyway, that's the way I do it and my way may not be the way for you


[Thanks for 馬鹿, I didn't know the kanji for that. Now I know the word 馬鹿チョン that Edict says means "idiot-proof; point-and-shoot camera". I like that. (Google search gives 50% more results for this word with kanji rather than katakana).

For バカ itself the Google ratio seems to be 6:4:1, katakana:kanji:hiragana. From what I saw! ]

I don't think it'd be a good idea to use バカチョン too often.
I've heard (perhaps it's a rumor?) that チョン was a derogatory word for Koreans (northern? from the word 朝鮮 maybe?). Aha, even edict has it.
So they'd say バカでも、チョンでも使える cameras...

Camera so simple that even a korean can use it :/

This is what I've heard...anyone know if there's any basis for this?

[edit] Apparently it's a word older than that...and the whole north korean thing came later. regardless, it's one of those words that they can't say on TV

I always assumed チョン came from the Korean surname 鄭/정 (Chung or Jeong), although if that is true then we would have to wonder why they went for Chung and not Kim, which is way more common.

I wonder if my mother's attitude toward me studying Japanese would change if I told her that her maiden name is an ethnic slur in Japanese...

Hmm, I saw that too...

there is this...which I can't read properly, but you're welcome to.

http://kan-chan.stbbs.net/word/pc/chon.html

foodcubes Wrote:ホントに　バカみたい　わたし。 (Why have they omitted "本当に", "馬鹿", and "私" all from the same sentence?)

本当に would usually be read as ほんとうに rather than ほんとに. The latter is a conversational form and hence is usually written in kana as it isn't strictly speaking correct from the kanji.

Oh, nice catch.

A lot of people who do RTK get stuck on thinking that they should write things in kanji if they know the kanji for them. That's just not the case. It's very normal to write things that can be written in kanji with hiragana or katakana instead, for a number of reasons. If you find a good description of how each of the scripts are used, it would probably clear up how emphasis, style, and other factors play a role in how a person chooses which script to write in.

I've seen a lot of people write little quips in Japanese in this forum entirely in kanji, even though it's really strange. If you actually write 「有難う御座います」 more often than 「ありがとうございます」 you are literally making a mistake. The vast majority of the time it's silly and seems weird to write that in kanji. If something is written in kana rather than kanji the majority of the time by native speakers, you should do the same.

Tzadeck Wrote:If you actually write 「有難う御座います」 more often than 「ありがとうございます」 you are literally making a mistake. The vast majority of the time it's silly and seems weird to write that in kanji. If something is written in kana rather than kanji the majority of the time by native speakers, you should do the same.

I agree with this, but one problem I have at an intermediate level (approx JLPT2) is finding out whether a given word IS normally written in kanji or not. Common vocab is not a problem, because you see it enough times to pick it up through exposure - but for new words?

The better dictionaries always seem to give the headword in kanji (even if that usage is rare). I tend to use the example sentences in the Green Goddess, which seem to be reasonably representative of actual usage. But is there a better way??

Given the complexities of stylistic usage (discussed in http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=5235), it's sometimes hard to find out what native speakers would do most of the time. Unless you ask them.

Tzadeck Wrote:If you actually write 「有難う御座います」 more often than 「ありがとうございます」 you are literally making a mistake. The vast majority of the time it's silly and seems weird to write that in kanji. If something is written in kana rather than kanji the majority of the time by native speakers, you should do the same.

Actually 「有難う」is sometimes used, however I commonly see 有り難う being used and in fact read a girls blog who always types it that way. and if you go on twitter search(a good way to check frequency) 有難う has quite a few results and so does 有り難う

Might ツイート be biased towards kanji, just to say more with fewer characters?

fugu68 Wrote:I agree with this, but one problem I have at an intermediate level (approx JLPT2) is finding out whether a given word IS normally written in kanji or not. Common vocab is not a problem, because you see it enough times to pick it up through exposure - but for new words?

Well, there's no hard and fast rule but in general:
1) Weird kanji (ie non 常用 or uncommon 常用) in a common word usually means the word is written in kana. Esoteric terms (technical jargon, etc) with weird kanji in them are more likely to retain the kanji.
2) Ateiji where the kanji was used purely for phonetic value and words whose link to the kanji has long since been lost are often written in kana. 有難う御座います is a good example of that. 有難う maybe be etymologically correct kanji but the reasons why that word means thank you are rather obscure these days (it's an honorific conjugation of 有難い i think, which literally means "difficult to be"?). Still, you do see 有難う occasionally. The 御座います part is a little more ridiculous. I don't know if 座 ever had a meaning beyond "sit", but it seems utterly gratuitous in that word now. Seeing 御 isn't that uncommon, but if you didn't have 座, you wouldn't have 御. 御ざいます would be just weird.

Zon70 Wrote:Actually 「有難う」is sometimes used, however I commonly see 有り難う being used and in fact read a girls blog who always types it that way. and if you go on twitter search(a good way to check frequency) 有難う has quite a few results and so does 有り難う

Yeah, I didn't say it was never used. I live in Japan and have seen it used quite a few times. But should you use it? Almost never.

I forget where i read it, but someone was talking about how different kanji'd words convey different nuances. In the case of 有難う御座います, the nuance conveyed is "the person who wrote this is a wanker".

So someone earlier said personal pronouns should be written in kana? From my experience I've seen

私 - quite a lot for both わたし and わたくし
貴方 - a fair bit, probably the least common
俺 - almost always
お前 - again almost always
君 - quite a bit. this one ends up in katakana more though.
僕 - pretty often as well.

should all of these really be written in kana or what? When doing handwriting practice I've always written these in kanji. あなた seems like by far the most rare in kanji, but I like it in kanji more.

On the old Toyo list it said to write personal pronouns in kana. Hardly anyone actually follows this guideline, though. I'm not sure if the Joyo list retained that statement.

yudantaiteki Wrote:On the old Toyo list it said to write personal pronouns in kana. Hardly anyone actually follows this guideline, though. I'm not sure if the Joyo list retained that statement.

Considering they added 俺 and 誰 to the list last year, i doubt it.

If I'm not mistaken, the わたし reading for 私 still hasn't been added to the Joyo list.

@arch9443 - It's not normal to write あなた with kanji. The rest are very common.

The kanjijiten site　has わたし as one of the readings added in 2010.

I've also been using the Green Goddess as a guideline for unfamiliar words, but I'm finding it doesn't always reflect common usage.

Incidentally, I noticed there's some overzealous 'kanjification' in some of the various vocab lists floated around (core, jlpt, etc.) No harm in learning rare kanji I suppose, but some words just aren't ever written in kanji.