jajaaan wrote:

nest0r wrote:

Likewise, I feel that writing has *never* been subordinate to 'speech', except insofar as people treat it as inferior. For me, that's basic logic, but in terms of the history of writing see perhaps David R. Olson's ch. 4 in The World on Paper, or look into theories about language/the mind.

The assertion that written language preceded spoken language is about as inaccurate as you can get.  Is this really what you're asserting, or am I misinterpreting?

It's inaccurate no matter what it means.  Humans spoke for tens of thousands of years before they invented writing, and writing has only been invented twice (maybe 3 times) in history.  It wasn't until very recently that the majority of any population was literate, and there are still many languages today that have no codified writing systems (linguists can represent anything with the roman alphabet + diacritics, and do so in papers, but those aren't actually used by the people who speak the language).  Most (non-deaf) humans automatically learn to speak as long as they are exposed to speech, but very few people automatically learn to read.

Writing has not been around for long enough to result in evolutionary changes in the human brain.  Evolution just doesn't work that fast, especially when only a tiny percentage of the population (an elite upper class) can read and write.

What were you people arguing about anyway?  I read IceCream's post, and it makes perfect sense, but what's the main point? 

"Writing japanese is more difficult than writing english...[written language distinguishes more between similar concepts than spoken language]... it seems that kanji has more of a direct link with concepts than a phonetic alphabet does."

Didn't we all know this already?  I feel that you're preaching to the choir, am I wrong? 

Edit: This thread got derailed for the most retarded ******* reason, by the way.

Last edited by jajaaan (2009 December 12, 12:34 am)

JimmySeal wrote:

Look out, kazelee.  Here it comes.

Nestor makes a lot of good points. I think for someone who has learned the kanji to a good extent, sight-reading kanji is more efficient than sight-reading a phonetic language because the morphemes are compacted into smaller units (single symbols instead of multiple), and their boundaries are clearly defined.

On the other hand I very much agree with this comment:

yudantaiteki wrote:

To me the Japanese writing system is one of the worst, if not the worst, systems currently in use in the world; even if it has some advantages, the extreme complexity and huge amount of work it takes to learn it aren't worth it.

The main reason for this (in my opinion) is not the complexity or number of characters, but the insane system of readings attached to the characters.  This aspect of the kanji reflects how the Japanese managed to take a pretty good idea from their mainland neighbors and heavily FUBAR it.

The Japanese took an already complicated system and made it much harder.  They injected their own pronunciations into the mix (kun-yomi), and as if that weren't bad enough, they thought it would make sense to Japanize kanji pronunciations from different time periods and different locations of China (呉音, 漢音, 唐音, 宋音) instead of coming up with a consistent system.

Go over to http://www.chinese-forums.com and I think the predominant types of threads that you find here ("漢字 are so hard", "gotta keep motivated", "漢字 learning strategies") are pretty sparse.  The typical Chinese learner's approach to learning 漢字 seems to be "just frickin' do it," because they're not strapped with the burden of the Japanese writing system's shoddy design.

I know it may be a bit too much to expect a lot of planning to go into a natural language and its writing system, especially when it involves something with so many components as kanji, but gosh you gotta wish sometimes that Japan had put a bit more thought into their use of 漢字.

Good points, and that's what I mean when I talk about the language evolving and/or being streamlined with proper 'reforms' that are more organically negotiated, but at the same time, all other languages and systems considered, I still think if one rethinks their views on literacy/writing, Japanese can easily be judged the best as easily as English or even more 'regular' systems. I only bring it up as a 'versus' sort of equation to counterbalance the stale rhetoric that gets thrown around by Ungerians or whatever. Or to put it another way, when push comes to shove, I'll take the mixed logographic/phonographic system every time. ^_^

PS - Edited that comment I made before this one in the thread to add stuff I wrote but got cut, I had some double-click/backup malfunctions when editing.

Last edited by nest0r (2009 December 12, 2:36 am)

kazelee wrote:

I feel so stupid right now.

@_@

Edit: I suddenly get the feeling a massive post in going to swell up beneath mine thus engulfing my post in it's wake.

Edit (again): It'll happen any minute now. Can you feel it? The darkness? It comes.

I put it in another thread, hope you don't mind. Had to do *something* with those bookmarks.

nest0r wrote:

I am saying, have said, a few things you ought to take together to understand me: Kanji is more complicated than the alphabet. But kanji's benefits aren't related to how complex it is to write. Also, I feel that the complexity of kanji doesn't have to make it hard, even if compared to a letter it's 'harder' in that it requires more effort. In fact, some theories, such as the 'levels of processing' effect, suggest that the more elaborate and meaningful the information you encode and rehearse in memory, the easier it is to learn than simpler items--while a kanji vs. a letter doesn't compare, a kanji+kana vs. a string of letters does. I think the methods we use to learn kanji and Japanese in general, images and muscle memory and audio cues, relate to that, and can be used by natives. In fact, I posted elsewhere a link to some sort of 'personal visual cognition' system that uses something similar to the Heisig method, encouraging learners to chunk the radicals into larger and larger pieces until they perceive it as a whole. Similarly I posted links to research on 'orthographic satiation' which suggests kanji are already processed as gestalt wholes, so I think it's on the right track to focus on new ways to combine primitives/radicals until they're encoded as icons.

Okay, before I read the rest of your post (I will), I will use this as the basis for my answer since I finally think I got your point so I will argue this point before I get lost in the rest of your VERY long post.

You're basically saying that kanji = harder to learn, but not harder to read. OR, you're saying that a kanji is harder to learn than ONE letter, but EASIER to learn than the string of letters needed to represent the same word in an alphabet. I'm going to address both ideas.

I'm not going to say it's harder to read a kanji when you already know it. In fact, reading with kanji when you know them is really nice. This was never what I was talking about, I was talking about learning kanji and remembering them. When I said it's hard to read kanji, I wasn't referring to people who already read kanji perfectly. But I DID refer to literate adults when I said kanji are hard to remember how to write, much harder than to remember how to write a word in an alphabet (there are exceptions. Chauffeur for example.)

As for the other point, I disagree completely. Once you know the basic system of a language and the alphabet, learning strings become really easy. Calling an alphabet arbitrary is stupid because it clearly isn't. Yeah, not all words are spelled EXACTLY like they sound, but most of them do, and the ones which do not are at least close approximations. If you know basic arithmetic and the digits 1-9, it doesn't matter if it's 12 + 5 or 18546821 +  3109124012, it's just as easy if you split it up (well, this isn't a very good analogy at all... but I can't think of a better one atm). For someone who knows the English language, ESPECIALLY a native, learning a new word doesn't even require learning. 90%+ of the time, you can hear a word and write it perfectly. How could this ever be possible with kanji? Sure, this is again a comparison which is unfair since an alphabet is phonetic, but that's exactly why it's easier.

What I'm really saying is that with alphabets, you learn the writing system and the language basic word structure and then you simply correct small spelling mistakes. You stop learning to write once you know those basics. With kanji, you always have to keep learning. It's like a superset which makes reading comfortable, but it IS much harder. Harder as in complex. To learn and use.

Pauline wrote:

It is very unlikely that even natives would be able to get the spelling right of a word they don't know by just hearing it.

Really?  So if I asked you to write down the words "internet," "polymorphism," "stereophonic," and "radiometry," you wouldn't be able to if you hadn't seen them spelled before?  Sure there are a lot of words that don't follow any easily-discernible spelling pattern, but there are a vast number that follow consistent patterns.  Pointing out the ambiguity of English spelling at the phonemic level doesn't prove anything.

Last edited by JimmySeal (2009 December 12, 8:21 am)

I'm responding to something 2 pages ago - you guys have been busy!

yudantaiteki wrote:

I just think the notion that romaji leads to bad pronunciation (and kana does not) is wrong.

If this was in reference to my post, I want to be clear that where poor pronunciation results from internalizing incorrect sounds, it's not necessarily permanent (if that's what you interpreted.) It will probably last so long as reading exceeds listening by a bunch and it isn't actively corrected.

Perhaps I could ask you to just take a look at one of Nestor's linked papers? As a TA, you might find it interesting. Orthographic input and second language phonology In case you don't have time, here's the gist of the 2 papers (same author/topic):

papers wrote:

Research shows that the pronunciation of second language learners can be affected by orthographic representations.

This chapter argues that, in the same way that L2 acoustic input is modulated by the presence of another phonological system in the learner’s mind, L2 orthographic input is also modulated by the presence of another orthography. Orthographic input, sometimes reinterpreted according to L1 orthography-phonology correspondences, interacts with acoustic input in shaping learners’ L2 phonological representations; these in turn lead to non-targetlike pronunciation (as well as affecting spelling, phonological awareness tasks and possibly perception).

Pinyin affects the pronunciation of adult learners of Chinese as a Foreign Language. This is due to the fact that adults are exposed to pinyin from the beginning and that they are already literate in another orthography, but it is also due to characteristics of the pinyin system. [...] Language teachers should bear in mind that pinyin can influence not only the pronunciation of beginner CFL learners, but also more advanced learners with a few years’ exposure to the language.

Yudantaiteki wrote:

I just don't think this is a problem for someone who is actually trying to learn pronunciation, and if they're not trying, kana isn't going to help.

That some students try harder doesn't answer whether or not the script used for a new language can adversely affect pronunciation. The degree of interference, and how quickly its overcome, will depend on a number of factors, including what the L1 it is. For students of Chinese, pinyin might be unavoidable since there is no other syllabary.  Luckily we have kana for Japanese.

JimmySeal wrote:

Pauline wrote:

It is very unlikely that even natives would be able to get the spelling right of a word they don't know by just hearing it.

Really?  So if I asked you to write down the words "internet," "polymorphism," "stereophonic," and "radiometry," you wouldn't be able to if you hadn't seen them spelled before?  Sure there are a lot of words that don't follow any easily-discernible spelling pattern, but there are a vast number that follow consistent patterns.  Pointing out the ambiguity of English spelling at the phonemic level doesn't prove anything.

Until you look at the masses of people who spell these very words incorrectly. The only languages I've come across where spelling is 'easy' are Spanish and possibly Italian. And errors are still possible in these language.

Tobberoth wrote:

For someone who knows the English language, ESPECIALLY a native, learning a new word doesn't even require learning. 90%+ of the time, you can hear a word and write it perfectly. How could this ever be possible with kanji? Sure, this is again a comparison which is unfair since an alphabet is phonetic, but that's exactly why it's easier.

0.o

Seriously? The answer is yes.

I did this while studying just yesterday. Hear word. Know context. Infer meaning. Associate kanji.

After witnessing a reunion between long lost family members a girl places her hands on her chest and uses the word "kandou" in causative form. You know that kan is 感 simply from the context. You then cycle through the few logical candidates for dou. 道, 同, and 導 don't really make much sense so the answer is 動. You put them together -感動. Hey, that makes sense. Replace you with I and that's what happened yesterday.

Now you may say that I did nothing more than take a guess and in some ways you might be right. Then again, you never know if you've spelled a word correctly (if you haven't mastered it's spelling) until after you look it up, so you're almost always guessing. The people who are better spellers are simply better guessers, IMO.

Also, most English speakers only scrape the surface of the deep barrel of words that is the English language. If you were to throw out random 'erudite' (spell that without seeing it first) vocabulary words and then ask people to spell them result would speak for itself.

Errodite. That would have been my first spelling had I never seen the word. Then Errodeit. Why? Because it sounds nothing like you'd expect it to be read.

BTW I made several typos and spelling errors before submitting this post.

kazelee, what you're talking about isn't comparable to what I'm talking about. Like you yourself said "Hear word. Know context. Infer meaning. Associate kanji". Four step process, some of those steps requiring quite a lot from the person doing it. Think of a word which included しょう and all the possible kanji you would have to shift through in your head. In an alphabet, you hear the word and simply write the corresponding letters. Some words will be very hard (especially in English, A.K.A The-Mess-They-Call-Language) and some basic knowledge will be needed outside of simply putting one letter after the other, but overall, you're writing what you hear and getting it right. And even IF you guess which kanji to use correctly, you still have to write all of those strokes correctly, if we want to bring in the complexity of that into this mess.

To do this in Japanese anyway, not only do you have to know the context, you have to know which kanji can make sense in this position, whereas in English you just need to know how the alphabet sounds and how it's usually connected. Someone criticized an English example above because it used common and wellknown latin or greece prefixes... but isn't that the same as building a word from kanji you already know well in a known context?

Tobberoth wrote:

Someone criticized an English example above because it used common and wellknown latin or greece prefixes... but isn't that the same as building a word from kanji you already know well in a known context?

Yeah. The difficulty lies not in the system but on an individuals knowledge. On a regular basis my uncle asks me how to spell words that I, myself, think are simple.

Just because it's possible to spell a word given the pronunciation doesn't always a mean person will be able to do so.

Tobberoth wrote:

Think of a word which included しょう and all the possible kanji you would have to shift through in your head.

The same can be said about the long I sound -- ite eight ight. The long a sound -- ay aye ai aie ei ey.

Japanese's readings don't make spelling any more difficult.


If you're talking about giving a person a random word and asking them to spell it, regardless of if the words in English or Japanese, if it's relatively common a native will be able to produce it.

what you're talking about isn't comparable to what I'm talking about. Like you yourself said "Hear word. Know context. Infer meaning. Associate kanji". Four step process, some of those steps requiring quite a lot from the person doing it.

Spell 'their' with no context. Even spelling bees give people some form of context to go on. Mmmm spelling-bees, their existence proves that there is a high amount of skill required to spell words in English.

kazelee, what you're talking about isn't comparable to what I'm talking about.

Are you talking about alphabets in general then? Because they're usefulness is determined by those who employ them. English as example #1.

And even IF you guess which kanji to use correctly, you still have to write all of those strokes correctly, if we want to bring in the complexity of that into this mess.

If I can write the majority of my kanji correctly after study for a year, I'm sure Japanese (save for those with bad habits) can write their own kanji as well.

Our previous President misspells (and mispronounces) a large portion of the words he uses.


Yes, kanji is a complex component, but spelling is a complicated task in both languages.

This is coming from the "Hey how do you spell this word" guy.

jaala wrote:

Firstly, most literate people tend to read obscure words at least once before hearing them, or at least they tend to read words of similar entomology at some point in their lives.  Spelling a word you've only heard for the first time is almost never a matter of chance, and it's certainly no harder than deducing the kanji for a Japanese word.

Points not that it's harder its that one is no more complicated than the other. Without context or prior exposure it's guessing in either language.

You tried to brush off words using "common" Latin and Greek prefixes, but that's just being selective with data that contradicts your assertions.

Did I, thought that was someone else? Please, take another look and tell me if I'm wrong.

This thread is full of contradictions, pedantry and flagrant Japanophilism.

I'll give you contradictions and pedantry, I've yet to see the Japanophilism. Though, I did skip an entire page so I'm sure there's a possibility I missed it.

kazelee wrote:

You tried to brush off words using "common" Latin and Greek prefixes, but that's just being selective with data that contradicts your assertions.

Did I, thought that was someone else? Please, take another look and tell me if I'm wrong.

This thread is full of contradictions, pedantry and flagrant Japanophilism.

I'll give you contradictions and pedantry, I've yet to see the Japanophilism. Though, I did skip an entire page so I'm sure there's a possibility I missed it.

You're right it was someone else.  That part of my post was addressed to two people at the same time who seemed to be arguing pretty much the same thing.  Apologies if I put words in your mouth by association. 

I think we're all Japanophiles here.  I'm not going to deny myself being one.  The whole "kanji >>>>>> everything else" tone of many posts in this thread is, though, retarded.  What's the point of putting on pseudo-intellectual airs to preach about the grories of grorious Nippon among people who all pretty much think the same way?  All that's getting accomplished is that some people are bluffing their way through technical language they clearly have not mastered and other people are beating a horse that was dead to begin with. 

Are people trying to change something that's wrong with the world?  Is there a fundamental misunderstanding of whether or not kanji are associated with meaning, or whether or not alphabets are associated with sounds?

Last edited by jajaaan (2009 December 12, 1:42 pm)

mezbup wrote:

Tobberoth wrote:

For someone who knows the English language, ESPECIALLY a native, learning a new word doesn't even require learning. 90%+ of the time, you can hear a word and write it perfectly. How could this ever be possible with kanji? Sure, this is again a comparison which is unfair since an alphabet is phonetic, but that's exactly why it's easier.

That applies to adults but as adults we take our native language for granted and forget how hard it was and how long it took for us to actually be able to read English fluently. Try teaching a kid to read and you'll realise that it takes kids til they're quite old to actually achieve fluent reading to a high level.

I used to have the misconception that learning to read Japanese was harder than learning to read English (which I thought was easy). I now believe they have the same fundamental difficulty.

Interesting stuff, guys. I'm too busy studying for my law school finals to give a thorough reply, but...

I think it's absurd to claim that learning to read English is just as hard as learning to to read Japanese just because English-speaking kids can't read "[fluently at] a high level." Whether or not a child can read something is based on his/her (a) past exposure to the spelling of a word and (b) understanding of the word/concept when spoken/heard.

First, (a). Let's think about how a kid learns to read. Imagine a kid trying to pronounce "give" and "dive." Imagine that the kid doesn't know about the silent "e" at the end of many words, about the general rule that makes the preceding vowel long, or about the many exceptions to that rule. He might say something like "gi-vee" (and give a puzzled face because he knows of no such word) and his dad will say "the E is silent" and the kid will go "giv"....AH-HA! And he will recognize the word as "give." Next, he'll say "div" when trying to read "dive," and again he'll give that puzzled face (not yet having heard "Div." as an abbreviation for "Divinity"). At this point, his dad will tell him that usually the "e" changes the vowel sound to a long vowel (he might also have to tell him what that means, but there are only a few vowels, so it won't take long). So the kid will try again, and voila! "Dive!" This is all it takes, as our kid has heard and understands the meanings of both "give" and "dive."

So now our kid knows "give" and "dive." He's reading along, and he comes across the word "positive." Our kid also knows and understands the phrase "I'm positive!" and it's very likely that he will be able to figure this one out, given that the only other alternative he knows sounds wrong. Point being: once he knows a few basic rules, assuming he is familiar with the rules, he can TEACH HIMSELF to read.

Throwing in (b) is what throws people off. Let's use the word "positivism"/"実証主義" as an example. We can all agree that a child's inability to "read" such a conceptually difficult word is related as much to (b) as to (a). Our learning-to-read kid might even struggle through the correct-ish pronunciation of the English word, though he might not trust himself or know what it means. Many people would not consider this "reading," but this has less to do with this kid's ability to map certain sounds/words onto a written language than with his still under-developed vocabulary.

Japanese is radically different...even if a Japanese kid *knew* the word "実証主義" and understand what it meant, he would only be able to figure it out if he had specifically studied all of those kanji (or maybe only 2 or 3 if he's a really smart contextual learner) and learned all of their readings (or at least meanings, again only if he's a really smart contextual learner).

I started reading when I was 4 years old, and once I knew how to read I encountered the occasional toughie, but I was on my own. My teachers *never* had to try to teach me how to read or coach me through the pronunciations of individual words, and I was reading about 20 library books a week when I was in elementary school (probably from about 1st grade on). If I struggled with a word, it was because I had never heard it before...in fact I often taught myself words with slightly erroneous pronunciations ("determine" is one example) because I learned my pronunciation FROM books (I was corrected the first time I tried to say the word - I had internalized the meaning and usage, but I had never encountered it in my listening/speaking world). I'm sorry, but a seven-year-old Japanese speaker can't even dream of picking up a regular adult newspaper and *understanding* it (like I did every morning when I was a kid), let alone reading it out loud. Of course, if a Japanese child were to read a sentence with only one word that he couldn't read, he would be just as able to figure out the meaning of that word from context (like I did with the word "determine"), but the point is that it is far less likely that he would encounter a sentence that he could read so easily. Even if the sentence was full of nothing but simple vocabulary, he wouldn't get anything out of it without having learned most of the kanji it contained (which is why novels/manga for kids have to use ルビ.

Let's not conflate the difficulty of acquiring an adult-level vocabulary with the difficulty of reading written words. A Japanese-speaking kid simply can't pick up a book written for Japanese adults and pronounce it aloud, whereas English-speaking kids do this *all* the time.

Sorry if that was confusing...

Last edited by skellyfish (2009 December 12, 2:46 pm)

nest0r wrote:

...I think it's better to make people literate ASAP and give them more flexible communication abilities even while using literacy alongside sound to help them speak better.

ASAP? Japanese? What is your definition of "literate?" Being able to recognize a few random words (or, more likely, parts of words in the case of Japanese), even if you can't make your way through an entire sentence?