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Can the Japanese read trad. Chinese ? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| agimcomas Pentaglot Groupie Canada Joined 6462 days ago 69 posts - 77 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, French, English, Portuguese, German Studies: Mandarin, Korean | Message 1 of 10 28 December 2007 at 7:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wonder if an ordinary Japanese speaker (i.e. knows all the kanji most Japanese know) can read a text written in traditional chinese characters (let's say, from Taiwan) and understand the meaning.
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| kewms Senior Member United States Joined 6190 days ago 160 posts - 159 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 2 of 10 28 December 2007 at 8:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Without studying Chinese, probably not.
First, Chinese uses more characters than Japanese does. Some of the vocabulary will be just plain unfamiliar. Even if individual characters are the same, they form combinations in different ways. (As a test, I glanced through the dictionary sections of Chinese and Japanese phrasebooks. Not a whole lot of common vocabulary.) Second, the grammar and sentence structure are substantially different. Also, most of the "grammar stuff" (prepositions, verb endings, conditionals, etc.) in Japanese is conveyed by kana, not kanji. So even if the Japanese person understands (some of) the words in a Chinese text, he won't understand how they are connected to each other. A Japanese person would probably have an advantage over a European with no exposure to characters at all. Because of the grammar difference and lack of common vocabulary, though, I suspect an English speaker would have more luck with French or Spanish than a Japanese speaker would with Chinese. Katherine Edited by kewms on 28 December 2007 at 8:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6389 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin* | Message 3 of 10 29 December 2007 at 5:39am | IP Logged | ||
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Japanese can often figure out what any particular text is about, not what it says exactly.
Going the other way is even easier - the meaningful parts of a Japanese texts are usually given in kanji. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6705 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 4 of 10 29 December 2007 at 8:59am | IP Logged | ||
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According to the Japanese students I talked to when I was taking Japanese classes, it's not easy. I would think it's like an English speaker trying to read German. They can recognize many words through the whole text, but their understanding is undercut by the grammar and by the fact that the words are being used in a different way than they are used to to. There has been a lot of semantic drift in both languages, and the common characters they use for certain central ideas are quite different.
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| owshawng Senior Member United States Joined 6889 days ago 202 posts - 217 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 10 29 December 2007 at 9:25am | IP Logged | ||
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My wife can read traditional Chinese. She can understand and figure out/guess the general ideas of an article written in Japanese, but she can't tell you word for word or sentence by sentence the meaning.
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| magic9man2 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6632 days ago 149 posts - 153 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Arabic (Written), Mandarin, French, Cantonese, Russian, Korean, Taiwanese, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 6 of 10 29 December 2007 at 5:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just like Raincrowlee said, they would get the general idea, but wouldn't know what is being said word for word.
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| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6553 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 7 of 10 30 December 2007 at 12:14am | IP Logged | ||
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Japanese seem to know the simplified characters too. Is that because some kanji are the simplified forms, or simplified characters often come from short-hand forms?
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| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6705 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 8 of 10 30 December 2007 at 6:47am | IP Logged | ||
I think it's mostly the latter. Many of the simplified characters were adopted from traditional written forms, and you can see many of them in use here in Taiwan when people write things down. Some Japanese characters are a little different because they developed their own version. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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