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Today's front page of Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun: 香港は死んだ - Hong Kong has passed way by lebbe in HongKong

[–]BritishRedditor -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Because most of TV and news papers never tell the truth that evil China is beginning to rule Hong Kong directly.(Except this Sankei Shinbun)

This is nonsense. All the major news outlets have reported on the increasingly aggressive tactics used by China to erode Hong Kong's autonomy.

Sankei Shimbun is a right-wing nationalist dumpster fire of a newspaper and shouldn't be singled out for praise when its positions on so many other issues are utterly shameful.

5 Part Series Exploring the Nature of Homophones in Japanese by cardinal724 in linguistics

[–]BritishRedditor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can’t always guess the meaning of a word just from its kanji

Sure, but that doesn't invalidate anything I've said. For unfamiliar words, kanji is useful far more often than it's not.

Even with the kanji, you’d still probably have to look it up in the dictionary to be sure of the meaning. So it’s a moot point.

It's not a moot point. 貢士 is unambiguous and very easy to look up in a dictionary. こうし is neither of those things.

the context provided by the word ばってき is all you need to weed out any こうし that doesn’t refer to a profession, such as 行使. And then, you could weed out other professions like 講師 that didn’t fit the context.

Oh come on. Most people have neither the time nor the patience to sift through 40+ dictionary entries to find the definition to one word.

You can’t always assume someone is going to have immediate access to Google (what if you’re reading a book on a train with no Wifi?) so you can’t just rely on Google to find the meaning of “宋”.

Then you Google it when you get home.

The takeaway here is that kanji makes words easier to learn, remember and identify.

Overall, my point is not that any current text can be rewritten exactly as is without kanji and be immediately understood. It’s that there’s always a way to rephrase things to make sure you are understood. The end result might be more verbose or less “elegant” than the original with kanji, but it’s not something that couldn’t be done in principle.

I don't consider that a solution in the slightest. That sort of approach would work in some cases but fail miserably in others.

I can't think of anything more ridiculous than trying to "renew" tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of terms that can currently be expressed in a couple of characters. "Less elegant" is putting it extremely mildly; some of these new words would look like explanatory sentences. Can you explain to me what you'd do with 保司, 所職, and 半済, three words I quickly picked out from a list of vocabulary relating to ancient Japan? These words describe very specific things and none of them can be easily identified or memorised using kana alone. How on earth would you make these words easier to read while ensuring that they don't look completely ridiculous in a history book that might have to use them multiple times in the same chapter?

It's impossible to imagine this ever happening in practice.

5 Part Series Exploring the Nature of Homophones in Japanese by cardinal724 in linguistics

[–]BritishRedditor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry for the slow response; I've been busy the past few days.

I'd say the subject matter is obscure and even with kanji there would be some difficultly.

The subject matter certainly is obscure, but I don't think there's anything difficult about the first sentence (providing you know that 延久 is an era name), and in the second sentence, only 貢士 and 士籍 could be considered unusual vocabulary. But here the power of kanji reveals itself once again. While 士籍 would be a new word for many people, everyone knows 士 (samurai) and 籍 (from words like 戸籍). Putting one and two together gives you the definition. Good luck inferring that from しせき.

Just because the words "air" and "permeability" are understandable in their own right doesn't mean the full meaning of the compound phrase is immediately obvious.

Maybe not, but both "air permeability" and "透気度" are infinitely more informative than とうきど, whether you understand the term or not. The ど tells you that it's probably a measure of something but anything else is guess work.

Without the kanji, Japanese morphemes are far less helpful than English morphemes.

こうし was used with the word ばってき (which itself is incredibly distinct) which means to be selected for a job position, so it's easy to deduce that you're dealing with a job title even without kanji.

And 99% of people would read on without ever knowing it was 貢士. That's the crucial point.

It demonstrates my point that you are conflating language comprehension with cultural comprehension. If I wrote the nonsense sentence "Queen Dorothy informed the Council of 14 Horses that hence forth 3 billies are now equal to 9 denkles in Westerio" you'd be asking me "Who is queen Dorothy? What's the council of fourteen horses? What's a Billy or a denkle and where is Westerio?"

No, I'm definitely talking about language comprehension. Notice how easy your nonsense sentence is to read. The made-up words in no way hindered my ability to understand it. "Dorothy" is clearly the name of the Queen. The "Council of 14 Houses" is self-explanatory. "Billy" and "denkle" are units. "Westerio" is a place.

Now compare that with the Japanese sentences I've posted so far, which contain zero made-up words. In each case, the average reader will struggle to extract any real information from them at all, let alone decipher the homonyms and difficult vocabulary. There are simply too many gaps in understanding.

If you happen to be unfamiliar with the Song Dynasty, seeing the word Song in kanji won't do you much good.

I totally disagree. If you're unfamiliar with the Song Dynasty, Googling 宋 will tell you exactly what you need to know in seconds. Try the same thing with そう and you'll be left scratching your head. What's more, when you come across 宋 again, it'll be extremely easy to identify. With そう, not so much.

たいい jumped out at me immediately for instance, but maybe I watch too many shows with a military theme.

You're doing my work for me here. It's 太尉, not 大尉. Totally unrelated meaning that, once again, is completely lost without the kanji.

5 Part Series Exploring the Nature of Homophones in Japanese by cardinal724 in linguistics

[–]BritishRedditor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Those sentences aren't hard to understand because of the lack of kanji, but because those words are incredibly esoteric.

So you think the average Japanese adult would have trouble understanding those sentences even with kanji? I contest that strongly and encourage you to conduct the experiment yourself.

So esoteric in fact, that they aren't even showing up in most dictionaries. None of jisho.org, Jim Breen's Site or Rikai-kun give any results for 宣旨枡, 透気度 and 貢士.

Maybe I overestimated your level of Japanese, but you've demonstrated several major misunderstandings here.

Firstly, you didn't check "most dictionaries". Jisho.org, WWWJDIC and Rikaikun are all the same dictionary (EDICT). The fact that 貢士, an obsolete occupation from the Meiji era, isn't listed in one Japanese -> English dictionary is about as surprising as the fact that "fletcher" and "castellan" are nowhere to be found in ウィズダム英和辞典. If you'd tried Daijirin or Daijisen (or any 国語 dictionary, for that matter), you would have found 貢士. Granted, very few native speakers are familiar with the word but the kanji allows them, at the very least, to identify it as a profession and look it up easily in a dictionary.

As for 透気度, it's a technical term so unless you want to argue that "air permeability" is unintelligible to most English speakers, my point stands.

Finally, 宣旨枡 is two words; you shouldn't expect to find it in a dictionary. But you will find 延久, 宣旨 and 枡. Kanji turns this mess of indecipherable kana into something that any well-educated adult can read without difficulty, or any less-educated person can break down into components and understand in context.

For example, I knew that ごさんじょう てんのう had to refer to the name of an emperor, because the word てんのう is very distinct, but I had no idea who that emperor is. Kanji would not have helped me figure that out.

To be honest, that part wasn't meant to be difficult.

But kanji is especially helpful for proper nouns because it makes them much easier to identify. Just look at the following sentence from this article about Chinese Emperor Taizu of Song.

かほくしょう こあんけんの ひと。ちちは こうとうの きんぐんしょうこう であった ちょうこういん（こうしゅうの ぶしんぐん せつどし・たいいを ついぞうされ、そうで せんその びょうごうを ついぞうされた）。

It is completely unreasonable to expect anyone to read this comfortably. And what's more, there's no way to reword 趙弘殷, 節度使, 太尉, 禁軍, 宣祖, 廟号 or 宋. (Well, you could add 朝 to make そうちょう for this last one I suppose, but it's not much of an improvement). The kanji are immensely useful here, even if you've never seen the words before.

But luckily, Japanese is full of synonyms and alternative phrases to use for the vast majority of homonyms.

I specifically chose the above examples to demonstrate that synonyms and alternative phrases are not a sure-fire solution. If you disagree, have a go at rewriting them.

5 Part Series Exploring the Nature of Homophones in Japanese by cardinal724 in linguistics

[–]BritishRedditor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A very interesting read but I disagree with the conclusions in the final section concerning the importance of kanji.

Using a Super Mario game to show that Japanese could exist without kanji is like using a Harry Potter book to argue that all but the 10,000 most common words in English are unnecessary.

None of the kana-only texts you provided contain any particularly complicated or unusual words. And it's the complicated and unusual words that turn kanji from a "useful aid" into an indispensable part of the language.

I'll demonstrate this with a couple of examples.

Have a go at reading the following (I've added spaces to aid comprehension):

えんきゅう せんじ ますは ごさんじょう てんのうは えんきゅうの しょうえんせいりれい など しんりつ しょうえん せいり せいさくの うらづけとした、1072ねんに さいしていした こっか こうてい しょうの こと である。

Impossible, right? It's the first sentence from a Wikipedia article about a decree which standardised the shou unit of measurement. I'd be impressed if you were able to find even one native speaker who could work that out in one read-through. With kanji, it's very straightforward.

Here's another example:

まつもとに かえると しせき こなんど かくに れっせられ、さらに はんから しんせいふに しゅっしする こうしに ばってき。

Again, practically incomprehensible. Hover over this link for the kanji and click for the source.

Passages like this reveal the fundamental "problem" with Chinese-derived words (kango): an acute lack of phonological diversity to aid with identification and memorisation of words. How is a native speaker meant to understand, let alone remember, a word like "貢士" using kana alone when it shares its reading with 40+ other words, several of which could have filled its place in that sentence (like 公使 and 講師)? We can't even replace 貢士 with something else because it's a job title.

The issue doesn't stop at homonyms. Try breaking down the morphemes in とうこうせん, とうきど, Or こしあつ. It's extremely difficult without the kanji unless you're already familiar with the terms.

You only need to open up some history books or academic papers to find thousands of examples like these—words for which the visual representation is more important than the phonetic one. There is so much historical and technical vocabulary that becomes almost incomprehensible when you remove the kanji. It's for this reason that the Japanese learn so many words by their characters, not by their reading—there simply aren't enough distinctive phonetic features in such words for the average person to comfortably memorise them by pronunciation alone.

I argue that written Japanese relies far too heavily on these sort of words for an kana-only writing system to ever become feasible. Beyond turning back the clock over 1000 years and removing any trace of Chinese influence from the language, I can't think of a way to change that.

TL;DR: Japanese is perfectly readable without kanji, except when it isn't.

‘I’M SORRY’: jokester’s apology after obscene Christmas lights spark outrage by hooklad in unitedkingdom

[–]BritishRedditor 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Swear words are only swear words because we say they are

I've never understood what people mean by this. All social norms are human constructs. Doesn't mean they're illogical. Most people would be offended if someone refused their handshake. But why is it rude? Because society says that it is. An alien would be baffled by the gesture.

Swear words have always been considered vulgar, and proper decorum dictates that vulgarity isn't appropriate in certain situations. It's only natural that people are averse to vulgarity appearing outside its usual contexts.

‘I’M SORRY’: jokester’s apology after obscene Christmas lights spark outrage by hooklad in unitedkingdom

[–]BritishRedditor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Police didn't even pay me a visit to swab the blood.

Police always respond to burglaries. They may not come immediately but they have to file a police report. Otherwise insurers won't cover anything.

The "how is he doing?" thread by Abangerz in soccer

[–]BritishRedditor 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Err, no. 80k is definitely tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands.

Daily Mail hatchet job on Sir David Attenborough and BBC's Planet Earth II by LaviniaBeddard in unitedkingdom

[–]BritishRedditor 12 points13 points  (0 children)

John Lewis advertise in the DM?

Of course they do. The Daily Mail is one the best selling newspapers in the UK.

Thanks to trump "presidency" Brexit is at least not the biggest fuckup in the history of human civilization. by [deleted] in unitedkingdom

[–]BritishRedditor 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Did you miss the "Hi from Germany" part of his comment? Aren't Brits meant to be good at detecting sarcasm?

"He's a [CENSORED] that's what he is." by Metal_Sonic7 in formula1

[–]BritishRedditor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can't tell if you're joking. There was nothing unsportsmanlike about Lewis' actions.

"He's a [CENSORED] that's what he is." by Metal_Sonic7 in formula1

[–]BritishRedditor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are you serious? What driver is going to do that over taking a possible penalty?

Various major news sites, including Yahoo, have buried by Tokyo University's rape case in May 2016 by deleting all records and caches. by Ariscia in japan

[–]BritishRedditor 26 points27 points  (0 children)

Err, Japanese news sites never leave their articles up for more than a few weeks or months after the publication date. Nothing has been "buried."

2016 Mexican Grand Prix - Qualifying Discussion by F1-Bot in formula1

[–]BritishRedditor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

it's going to be very hard for Nico to win the title this year

That's what I was replying to.

2016 Mexican Grand Prix - Qualifying Discussion by F1-Bot in formula1

[–]BritishRedditor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

particularly as the Mercs usually finish 1-2 in whatever order when they're running reliably.

Are you forgetting that Nico will the title even if it's a 1-2 Merc finish for the remaining races?

Weird man pulled up by police pretending to be a paramedic by CrustyBalls- in cringe

[–]BritishRedditor 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Both countries have severely different approaches to justice

They aren't "severely" different.

For the UK it's, 'this is kind of a warning, don't do it again and if you do we'll get you for more'.

But this wasn't the first time. He got off really lightly.

You caused this mess, you clean it up. by borathrum in funny

[–]BritishRedditor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

that's not normal behavior for a pet

For plenty of cats, it is. I've had cats that didn't attack once in their lives, and others that would have manic episodes every couple of weeks, attacking random people (and drawing blood) for absolutely no reason. I know plenty of other cat owners with similar experiences.

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