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Some questions about Japanese | ||
Tags: Difficulty | Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5525 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 1 of 11 01 September 2014 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There are some things about Japanese that I'm having trouble grasping compared to
other languages I've studied: 1) How do you deal with the fact that Japanese (when using Kanji specifically) is not particularly phonetic when reading. Unlike Korean (and Chinese, from what I've seen), Japanese seems to mix and match readings for the same character as needed for different words. So how do you know how to pronounce a Kanji-based word you've never seen before? Do you make a guess based on words you do know with those characters (assuming there isn't a completely unknown Kanji present) or do you simply not know how to pronounce it until you look up the word? 2) The end of question 1 brings me to another question. How do you go about generating Kanji (whether to look it up in a dictionary or just to type it in general) for which you don't know the reading or (perhaps more importantly) for which the reading refuses to bring up the requested Kanji in the IME you are using (even though you know that is a valid reading for those characters). A prime example of this is names, where entering a name into the Windows Japanese IME will often generate a list of Kanji but none of the offerings match the Kanji you are trying to generate. For example, I recently came across the family name 多田 pronounced as おおた(Oota), but the Windows 7 Japanese IME refuses to generate those characters from that reading (though, oddly enough the iBus Anthy IME I'm using in my Linux browsing VM generates that combo just fine). I was finally able to generate them (to enter into my SRS) using a reading of ただ(tada) instead since "ta" is apparently another reading for 多 (which I guessed at based on the Korean reading of 다 (da) for that character) and "da" for 田, but if I weren't able to figure out an alternate reading, what does one do to create the Kanji generally? Use the drawing pad instead (which seems inefficient at best)? I'm so used to Korean Hanja where each character generally only has one reading (though some have two or more, they aren't nearly as common as those with only one reading) so generating those characters from readings (even those with multiple readings) is pretty straightforward and very fast. Japanese seems to be hit-or-miss regarding whether a reading (especially for names) will offer the right Kanji as a possibility. In retrospect, those are really two extensions of the same question (especially for the reading > Kanji part of the second question), but this is something that has always been difficult to wrap my mind around regarding Japanese. Neither Korean nor Spanish have this apparent complete disconnect between the written and pronounced forms. English does have more of a disconnect at times, but it is still an alphabet so you can simply type the word to look up the pronunciation easily. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5756 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 2 of 11 01 September 2014 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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1. I guess, and I try to check if I guessed correctly when I get that opportunity. And then I am super duper proud of myself when I guessed the reading of a new name correctly. And try to memorize it when I didn't.
2. I also use online dictionaries that way, when I don't know/don't remember a particular reading. I've heard of native speakers having nick names that are based on the readings that have to be entered into an IME in order to write their name, because the IME doesn't convert the actual reading of the name, so I assume it's what native speakers do. As for windows IME, it should learn new kanji combinations. I actually teach my IME to write Bao as 馬雄, by choosing one character in the drop down menu for the left one first, then using arrow right, the right character should be underlined, and then I could choose the second character. (Mine does 多田 just fine though) Edited by Bao on 01 September 2014 at 9:33pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5972 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 3 of 11 01 September 2014 at 9:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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1) It is possible to make an educated guess if you recognise the kanji from other contexts, especially if it fits in with something you recognise in the spoken language, however ultimately you can only really be sure if you look it up. This doesn't mean you have to look up everything of course, it just depends on how much the not knowing bugs you.
2) I am usually able to muddle by using alternative readings to get the kanji I want to see and if all else fails using the drawing pad. And sometimes my IME struggles because I've unwittingly made a typo (おう/おお catches me out a lot). For specific words/names that your IME won't recognise, it is possible to add entries to the IME dictionary manually, specifying the reading to use. If Windows 7 hasn't changed from Vista, you'll be able to do this by clicking on the "Tools" button in the IME toolbar and going to "Add Word or Entry". 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5525 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 4 of 11 01 September 2014 at 10:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
Mine was only giving 大田, 太田, plus the two Kana forms as choices. The arrow key trick you described works with "bao", but not when I type "oota" oddly enough. I think it is treating "oota" as a whole object instead.
That trick worked great and it now gives me 多田 as a suggestion for おおた after adding that. Thanks. :) Thanks to both of you for the input on both questions in general as well. That provided some useful insight that I was lacking into how others handle those scenarios. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4655 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 5 of 11 01 September 2014 at 11:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
As the others have said, you don't know (in general) although you can make potentially make an educated guess. About 200 kanji only have a single reading and many others only have a single reading apart from a very limited number of exceptions. For example 電 is always read as デン.
I used to count strokes and then dive off to wikipedia List of kanji by stroke count article. Mostly that taught me that, even though I'm a programmer by trade, I can be off by more than one! These days I can usually find the kanji very quickly on the RTK Study page. That presupposes that you can remember the appropriate keyword. You can also export the stories to a spreadsheet and look for the keywords for the component parts, if that's easier. I've also tried various smartphone apps that can go from finger-scrawl to kanji with varying rates of success. There are even apps which will go from image to kanji, but I've not found one (yet) that has a high enough success rate to make it quicker (for me) than using RTK. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4655 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 6 of 11 01 September 2014 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I forgot one other thing. say you've just come across this snippet (which I just have):
階段を上ってくる let's assume you know 階段 is かいだん but 上って confuses you, perhaps because it's an irregular form (which, as an aside, this book seems to have in abundance). You can still guess that it is something that (in some way) means "going up". So you can fill in that "blank" with something appropriate (in Japanese or English or whatever) and move right along. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5525 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 7 of 11 02 September 2014 at 12:32am | IP Logged | |||||
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In that example, I fortunately already know 上 as 상 (sang) in Korean (since I've been
studying Chinese characters as Korean Hanja for a while now) and thus would get a rough idea of that character anyway, I was more concerned with how to read the word aloud or to figure out how to type it in Japanese. I guess for many characters I will have available to me somewhat of a "cheating" method of generating the character via Korean readings, but there are two issues with that: (a) it won't surprise me if and when the Korean readings start becoming more vague and start to fall away as I start mentally viewing those characters more as Kanji than Hanja (since modern Korean doesn't use those characters heavily, so I don't get a lot of use reading them in Korean) and (b) Korean Hanja is based on traditional Chinese characters, not the simplified versions, so many characters generated from a Korean IME may not look up correctly as Japanese as they aren't the same unicode character behind the scenese. Even many that aren't simplified have variants in each language that look just a bit different and thus aren't the same character to the computer. Part of the reason I'm focused on the "read aloud" part was something I recall reading on AJATT where he noted that in Japan he was able to read a document without advance preparation to a group aloud. If you are doing that and you hit a word you don't know, it seems odd to just guess at the reading, but perhaps that is all you can do in that situation. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5756 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 8 of 11 02 September 2014 at 1:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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When it comes to looking up kanji I don't know the reading of, I deliberately type in compounds using other readings because I like to think that that makes it easier for me to accept that a kanji is read several ways, and that seeing the correct reading come up as a result of my using the wrong readings is like a little charm that makes me think: Ok, I cheated to get here, and this reading is how it really should be like! And then I type in the correct reading, and see how the same result pops up. If that doesn't work, I use radical look up, and if *that* doesn't work I use my IME pad and character recognition. (Or the paper dictionary ... maybe, sometimes.) Edited by Bao on 02 September 2014 at 1:12pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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