Betelgeuzah Wrote:

Quote:I learned to read and write them in a *day*.

Did you learn the alphabet in a day? We spent 2 years practicing them in school, and many more to make our handwriting better. The perspective I am looking at here is that of a 5-7 year old vs. someone possibly in his 20's.

The Latin alphabet? No.
I did learn a few *other* alphabets as a child, neither taking significantly longer than a day or two. We exchanged secret messages written in these letters. Again, it was somewhat slower than the real Latin alphabet, just because we had less practice, but *learning* them? Piece of cake.

If you have years and years to learn the stuff as a child - especially in the light of still having to learn hiragana, romaji and freaking *kanji* - how much will an extra few dozen characters slow you down, really?

I simply don't get your focus on katakana - arguing for a complete overhaul of Japanese writing in order to get rid of the kanji in favour of kana or romaji I could sort of understand (even though I might not agree), but katakana?

alizarine Wrote:I simply don't get your focus on katakana - arguing for a complete overhaul of Japanese writing in order to get rid of the kanji in favour of kana or romaji I could sort of understand (even though I might not agree), but katakana?

So what you don't get is that I'm not "all or nothing" type of guy, or what? If you understand a total overhaul how can you not understand the reasoning behind a smaller scale overhaul?

Granted, total overhaul is fine with me. But even this kind of change makes people come at me like madmen, so do you think I am crazy enough to ask for a complete makeover?

Betelgeuzah Wrote:

alizarine Wrote:I simply don't get your focus on katakana - arguing for a complete overhaul of Japanese writing in order to get rid of the kanji in favour of kana or romaji I could sort of understand (even though I might not agree), but katakana?

So what you don't get is that I'm not "all or nothing" type of guy, or what? If you understand a total overhaul how can you not understand the reasoning behind a smaller scale overhaul?

Granted, total overhaul is fine with me. But even this kind of change makes people come at me like madmen, so do you think I am crazy enough to ask for a complete makeover?

It just seems like such a piffling triviality if you want to reduce complexity. There's thousands of kanji, and you're arguing to get rid of a few katakana.
It reads like an argument to get rid of the letter "Y" in English and replace it with "I" in terms of the amount of simplification it'd achieve.

alizarine Wrote:It just seems like such a piffling triviality if you want to reduce complexity. There's thousands of kanji, and you're arguing to get rid of a few katakana.
It reads like an argument to get rid of the letter "Y" in English and replace it with "I"s in terms of the amount of simplification it achieves.

Well, along with that it should really help out with being able to comprehend our alphabet later on as well (which they are less exposed to today, although it's something they need to know). I'm just looking at it from a case-by-case basis. I'm sure kanji system could be simplified, but what I have observed myself is related to katakana, not kanji.

kainzero Wrote:もういい！
Faakinで食べに行こう！

だってこの世にファッキンほどいいものないってば！

Nah, still looks like an incredibly small and petty change. It's not that I think it'd ruin Japanese, I just think the effects are too irrelevant to even *start* to bother.

It's similar to how I think some arguments against romaji as a tool to learn Japanese are rather silly. Sure, if you want to learn the language thoroughly and actually be able to read it, you'll absolutely need kana and kanji and it pays to get used to them ASAP through your learning material - no argument from me there.

The importance of aspects like "it'll help your pronunciation" seems massively overstated, though. If you don't actually *listen* to native speakers AND have an ear for the unfamiliar sounds in a foreign language as well as a tongue that can wrap their way around them, you'll have a horrible accent no matter how the words are written.

If you're serious about learning the language, you'll need to make a conscious effort to learn the proper spelling/writing and to improve your pronunciation by listening and speaking *anyway*, and the incidental knowledge gained through loanwords will be a negligibly small advantage; and those that simply learn a foreign language at school and never use it or just want to get by on holiday with the help of a phrasebook will sound ridiculous in any case - a few "correctly" spelt loanwords aren't nearly enough to change that.

Japanese Kids learn Katakana first don't they? Or at least my 6 year old host sister did. (She wrote me a letter. And it took me hours to decipher, because all the Japanese words were in Katakana with no spaces to mark separate words or particles. )

This thread has veered all over the place lets be fair, Glomaji is just a new romaji system attempting to clean up the mess of the others for learners. It has good points, standardisation. and bad points.. using English words instead of the their Japanese equivalents. When If you dared to do that to someone learning English, you'd be screamed at.

It's not anyone's place to say what is better for Japanese natives to learn, because we aren't Japanese natives, and we learnt our own languages first and theirs after.

Who suggested getting rid of capital letters? wtf... next thing we'll be dumping adjectives because things like tremendous are too difficult to spell..

There is already a solution to that problem though..
we can call things that are good... Good.
and things that are better than good. Plus Good.

It's quite amusing to see how some people would argue that over a thousand years of culture and tradition should be thrown out the window in favor of the alphabet. If you're only after efficiency, perhaps the "best" solution would be to do away with all languages except one. Perhaps we could even make an entirely new language with the most simple and efficient strucutre as possible. We could even use a version of the international phonetic alphabet to write it out to ensure that every sound is represented by a unique symbol unlike with the "flawed" alphabet. Wouldn't that be the "best"?

I for one would rather keep the diversity we have now and I think the same thought process applies in the kana versus romaji "debate". Perhaps there are some merits to the idea of replacing kana with romaji but I certainly don't think they outweigh the benefits of preserving your culture. It is true that languages evolve all the time, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we should treat aspects of our culture tied to our languages as expendable in my opinion.

Fleskmos Wrote:It's quite amusing to see how some people would argue that over a thousand years of culture and tradition should be thrown out the window in favor of the alphabet.

This kind of thinking is more amusing, actually.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:

Fleskmos Wrote:It's quite amusing to see how some people would argue that over a thousand years of culture and tradition should be thrown out the window in favor of the alphabet.

This kind of thinking is more amusing, actually.

That's one compelling argument...

Fleskmos Wrote:That's one compelling argument...

You aren't bringing anything new to the discussion. It's all within the current 6 pages.

Loanwords > culture and tradition.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:

Fleskmos Wrote:That's one compelling argument...

You aren't bringing anything new to the discussion. It's all within the current 6 pages.

Loanwords > culture and tradition.

http://www.kanjiclinic.com/kc59final.htm

You should read that column if you have some spare time. It's interesting and pretty relevant to the loanword discussion. Efforts are being made to replace loanwords that are incomprehensible to many Japanese speakers with indigenous Japanese words. Of course, keeping up with all the new ideas and phenomena is quite hard so it's only natural that lots of loan words slip through into the Japanese language.

Any movement will have its' opposers. Yet the reality of the situation here is that for the majority of people

loanwords > culture and tradition.

Otherwise domesutikkubaiorensu wouldn't have been made into a word in the first place.

I've actually read almost every post in this thread, and I still don't know what the hell's going on.

This however makes long-term "sense":

Fleskmos Wrote:It's quite amusing to see how some people would argue that over a thousand years of culture and tradition should be thrown out the window in favor of the alphabet. If you're only after efficiency, perhaps the "best" solution would be to do away with all languages except one. Perhaps we could even make an entirely new language with the most simple and efficient strucutre as possible. We could even use a version of the international phonetic alphabet to write it out to ensure that every sound is represented by a unique symbol unlike with the "flawed" alphabet. Wouldn't that be the "best"?

Indeed. We might as well just solve the overall overarching problem once and for all and force everyone in the world (at gun-point, because the best way of dealing with an issue is with force) to learn English, or make a new world language and force everyone to learn that one. That solves the international communication problem.

It's either that or relative freedom which inevitably leads to multiple languages in the world since every individual will walk their own path.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:Any movement will have its' opposers. Yet the reality of the situation here is that for the majority of people

loanwords > culture and tradition.

Otherwise domesutikkubaiorensu wouldn't have been made into a word in the first place.

I think the point is that loanwords like that are seen as a problem. The prominence of loanwords in the Japanese language doesn't necessarily mean that Japanese people want to replace their own words or writing systems.

Using the fact that something has been made in the first place as an argument for its existence feels a bit lackluster. I think you've made a few great points about the merits romaji have over kana but those points are far from compelling enough to suggest that it would be a good idea to actually replace kana with romaji. Surely you aren't suggesting that the existence of loanwords must mean that Japanese people don't value their culture?

Quote:Surely you aren't suggesting that the existence of loanwords must mean that Japanese people don't value their culture?

Surely you aren't claiming that they do, while raping their language with domesutikkubaiorensu's? It's not black and white though, but what is clear is that aside from the institution of "lets keep other languages' influence outside our own language" that exists in every country Japanese didn't value their culture enough to make real Japanese words for these new terms.

Maybe they don't want to replace them, maybe they do. What we do know is that foreign words are abundant in the language and the token purists oppose the trend.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:

Quote:Surely you aren't suggesting that the existence of loanwords must mean that Japanese people don't value their culture?

Surely you aren't claiming that they do, while raping their language with domesutikkubaiorensu's?

I am. I think that Japanese people value their culture a lot. Most of my Japanese friends claim to like there own culture and I think that's a good thing. The world would be quite boring if we didn't make any efforts to preserve our culture.

Please know that I'm not trying to be uncivil here. I just think it's plain wrong to extrapolate that Japanese people don't like their culture because their language has lots of loanwords.

Fleskmos Wrote:I am. I think that Japanese people value their culture a lot. Most of my Japanese friends claim to like there own culture and I think that's a good thing. The world would be quite boring if we didn't make any efforts to preserve our culture.

Please know that I'm not trying to be uncivil here. I just think it's plain wrong to extrapolate that Japanese people don't like their culture because their language has lots of loanwords.

I think that you are using the term culture too liberately here. It consists of many things, and language is one of them. To some people language is important from a cultural standpoint, others are far more likely to adjust to change.

For example I would say that most finns like their culture but very few care about language purity (even though its a part of the culture) more than globalization which means abundance of English in language.

I am sure that Japanese like their culture. I have my doubts as to whether that translates to language as well, due to recent developments and lack of majority interest to truly change that trend.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:

Fleskmos Wrote:I am. I think that Japanese people value their culture a lot. Most of my Japanese friends claim to like there own culture and I think that's a good thing. The world would be quite boring if we didn't make any efforts to preserve our culture.

Please know that I'm not trying to be uncivil here. I just think it's plain wrong to extrapolate that Japanese people don't like their culture because their language has lots of loanwords.

I think that you are using the term culture too liberately here. It consists of many things, and language is one of them. To some people language is important from a cultural standpoint, others are far more likely to adjust to change.

For example I would say that most finns like their culture but very few care about language purity (even though its a part of the culture) more than globalization which means abundance of English in language.

I am sure that Japanese like their culture. I have my doubts as to whether that translates to language as well, due to recent developments and lack of majority interest to truly change that trend.

Now that's a more reasonable standpoint. It could be true that Japanese speakers don't care all that much for their language but I think the prime reason for the abundance of loanwords in Japanese is that the language just hasn't been able to keep up with all new ideas and concepts born in recent times.

For instance, there are lots of loanwords related to the internet and computers. With the advent of new concepts and ideas, I think it can be hard for the language to keep up. When there is a huge influx of loanwords that the average Japanese speaker may have difficulties understanding, I would see that as a problem that needs some sort of solution rather than a sign that further changes are welcome but I guess it's fair to say that none of us can know for sure unless we conduct a survey and do some real research

Look, loanwords happen. In a few years, some of them will have fallen by the wayside and some of them will have become a natural part of the language. This isn't not caring about - or even "raping" - your language or the language the loanwords come from, this is just the way language works. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with the value of katakana.

I will say this: In the context of what Glomaji is trying to do, it makes total sense to write actual foreign words - and those loanwords whose meaning wasn't changed in the process of importing them - in romaji. ドメスチックバイオレンス would be a perfect example. There's no reason to inflict "domesutikkubaiorenso" - written in romaji - on a native speaker of English.

What about マイカー though, or アルバイト? Or, for that matter, contractions like パソコン?
Writing these in their original spelling would be of very limited help to native speakers of English or German.

Let's use the word "rape" to mean "rape," and not "adopting loanwords."

Yeah, that too.
My scare quotes were meant to portray that sentiment, but spelling it out probably works better.

I don't know where you get the bizarre idea that importing a lot of loanwords into a language is tantamount to raping one's own language or not caring about it. Loanwords are a very natural part of language evolution, and stubbornly fighting against the tides the way the French do is just pointless and silly. Speaking of French, probably close to half of the English language was imported en masse(<---) from French. Would you claim that the English raped their own language?

JimmySeal Wrote:I don't know where you get the bizarre idea that importing a lot of loanwords into a language is tantamount to raping one's own language or not caring about it. Loanwords are a very natural part of language evolution, and stubbornly fighting against the tides the way the French do is just pointless and silly. Speaking of French, probably close to half of the English language was imported en masse(<---) from French. Would you claim that the English raped their language?

And we don't use their pronunciations or spellings either! the cheek of us.

JimmySeal Wrote:Speaking of French, probably close to half of the English language was imported en masse(<---) from French. Would you claim that the English raped their language?

A little less than a third, as far as I know. About the same number of words as those with Latin roots, and a little more than the number of words with Germanic (the original Anglo-Saxon) roots.

Which, by the way, is the reason why English has such as vast vocabulary compared to many other languages (as far as it makes sense to determine that) - there are many basic concepts for which there are words from all three of them, sometimes with more or less distinct meanings, sometimes with just with different connotations.

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