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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| orion Senior Member United States Joined 7026 days ago 622 posts - 678 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 113 of 121 02 October 2011 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
One of my Japanese friends can no longer compose a handwritten letter to his mother back in Japan, using proper kanji. He uses mostly kana and then his mom accuses him of writing like a little kid. To avoid this, he mostly phones her when he needs to communicate, as she doesn't like email. If even the native people forget how to use their own script, I really don't see it ever "dominating" the internet. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5965 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 114 of 121 02 October 2011 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
This has probably already been pointed out on one of the previous 14 pages, but there are fewer and fewer situations these days in which it's necessary to hand write something. There are some things that stand in the way of Mandarin being adopted for wider use. This isn't one of them. Japanese and Chinese people can use their script just fine. And as for your friend, he is apparently just lazy as he could quickly and effortlessly look up on a phone or computer the several characters he forgets when writing a letter to his mum. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| orion Senior Member United States Joined 7026 days ago 622 posts - 678 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 115 of 121 03 October 2011 at 4:23am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I refer you to this site: http://laowaichinese.net/stump-the-chinese-hard-hanzi.htm Click on the article "The Invisible Writing on the Wall" The need for handwriting notes will not disappear anytime soon. Is it not sad that a native speaker would have to look up how to write a common word such as "key" in their own script? Edited by orion on 03 October 2011 at 4:45am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Sandman Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5413 days ago 168 posts - 389 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 116 of 121 08 October 2011 at 11:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I find this a questionable argument. If Japanese speakers are typing romaji into their keyboard to then look for the kanji that "looks right" what exactly is the point of the kanji character in the first place? Are they "lazy" because they are doing what is most efficient for them? If so ... get used to lazy .. If someone has to remember thousands of characters to write a letter to their mom, rather than a handful of phonetically correct characters (as we all do, poorly at times ...), is that person lazy or just very smart and efficient? I know the kanji use is due to the duplication of sounds that are used for so many characters, but clearly doing away with the kanji characters at some point would be FAR easier than doing away with the romaji/kana script, and is something younger Japanese seem to be moving toward (using more katakana versions of English words seemingly as a way to move away from having to learn the difficult kanji originals). I don't find it a pure coincidence that children in Japan are taught simple kana script before having kanji added (and to some degree can communicate just fine without a single kanji character), and the society at large is moving toward massive katakana-ization of their language as pure coincidence. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Remster Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4810 days ago 120 posts - 134 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: German, French | Message 117 of 121 10 October 2011 at 12:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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(I'm not sure whether this has been posted, therefore I apologize in advance.)
I doubt it'll happen anytime soon, atleast not before Mandarine has gotten the same status of 'lingua franca' as English, besides, I don't think people will switch to Chinese characters so easily. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5965 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 118 of 121 10 October 2011 at 6:00pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I don't have time to read a 17 page paper.
After considering this a little more, I don't think it even matters how people write their notes. They can write a mix of whatever characters and letters and languages that suites them. What matters is how the language is used in the media. In newspapers, government documents, magazines, textbooks, literature, on TV, the internet, and so forth. And for all these media, handwriting is just about obsolete.
They can write it in most situations that they need to: when writing an e-mail, a text message, a blog post. And if for some reason keys figured prominently in whatever notes they were taking, I'm sure they would after refreshing their memory soon be writing "key" with ease. So no, I'm hardly saddened by the prospect. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5965 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 119 of 121 10 October 2011 at 6:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
To present a written form of the word that is considered traditionally correct and easily readable.
I only say the guy in the story is lazy because instead of looking up a few kanji he wanted to stop writing letters to his mom altogether. I don't think using kana in place of kanji is a big deal in personal handwritten stuff. I personally usually avoid it, but that's just me.
You're presenting a situation that in reality doesn't happen. If a person is capable of written correspondence in Japanese, then they are most likely capable of handwriting a large chunk of kanji.
Actually the use of kanji in Japanese society is on the rise. Get your facts straight.
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| Sandman Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5413 days ago 168 posts - 389 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 120 of 121 23 October 2011 at 6:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I may be wrong, but I believe this was a wider thread on whether more complicated scripts such as Chinese or Japanese will "rule the world". Therefore making things traditionally correct and easily readable solely for those brought up in a specific culture would not advance that cause. As argued previously, it would make it make it more difficult. If a phonetic script already exists, that is widely understood and is a common "fall-back" for those even raised as children in the culture, it seems a more complicated script that often just "restates" what already exists in the other script would make learning take far longer for non-natives.
Was my statement about katakana-ization incorrect do you think? If Kanji use is so useful, why would the Japanese simply not use new Kanji constructions for all the loan words as well? Obviously with computers to translate things into kanji, I would be massively surprised if kanji use had not increased. Any increase probably correlates very closely to the proliferation of personal computers. Is it really an increase if people need computers to do it for them? I can write a letter using kanji just fine if a computer is there ... in fact use far more kanji than I would've even thought of ... but with a pen I'd probably be lucky to actually write 10% of the kanji I'd recognize from the computer "translation" of my kana. True, I don't practice writing kanji. But that is exactly the point. It is to some degree an additional unnecessary step. Perhaps I should've been more precise in saying that I believe what the Japanese can actually produce on their OWN from their own brains is veering away from kanji use. Kanji use is an additional difficulty that relies to a large degree upon automation in order to survive. Therefore not something conducive to a lingua-franca.
How much of that did you type in with romaji/hiragana first and then after hitting your space bar (and after the computer did all the actual work) did you not just glance over it to make sure it "looked" right? That, my friend, is not the recipe for a lingua franca. That 2nd step of glancing over it to make sure "it looks right" is a massive time investment that people outside of that specific country will very, very, rarely make. Edited by Sandman on 23 October 2011 at 8:16am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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