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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-Corner_Method https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-Corner_Method You can sort Chinese characters (including Kanji but i'm

by trw999 7y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-Corner_Method https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-Corner_Method You can sort Chinese characters (including Kanji but i'm not sure they use the Four Corners Method) by the Four Corners method. Why would you need to sort kanji phonetically in the first place? Do Japanese users actually expect names to be sorted phonetically? English speakers don't expect names to be sorted by IPA so consistency of the sorting scheme should be all that matters.

aidenn0 7y ago
Kanji in Japanese are sorted by writing them out phonetically in Kana and then sorting by the kana. English speakers don't expect names to be sorted by IPA because most English speakers don't know IPA, but all Japanese speakers do know the kana. The fact that they are sorted as-if written in kana means that the exact same written character will be sorted differently according to context. For "not names" we actually do have fairly good algorithms for determining the pronunciation of Kanji, but for many names there is literally no way to know how to pronounce them without asking.
cooper12 7y ago
I actually made a serious attempt at learning the Four-Corner Method for kanji [0] and it was very frustrating. It would be difficult to determine what parts of the kanji belonged to which corner, and which exact shape they corresponded to. And strokes wouldn't always be interpreted the way I thought they'd be since it's based on a handwritten representation of the character. Many characters also have multiple FC numbers! The FC method was never meant to uniquely identify specific characters, but just to help narrow down a list of candidates in a dictionary. Funnily enough, I also argue something similar in this thread that has the same drawbacks :) [0]: Because I was interested in typing characters while not actually knowing the kanji. The Tagaini Jisho app (https://www.tagaini.net/ https://www.tagaini.net/) was indispensable because it lets you search on multiple parameters including partial FC # and simpler methods like SKIP codes (http://nihongo.monash.edu/SKIP.html http://nihongo.monash.edu/SKIP.html). The only characters I couldn't transcribe with this method were those printed so small that the individual strokes were difficult to make out.
- segfaultbuserr 7y ago
  Don't know about Japanese, but other well-known input schemes for Chinese includes Cangjie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cangjie_input_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cangjie_input_method), Zhengma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhengma_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhengma_method), and Wubi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubi_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubi_method). In fact, all of these non-phonetic input/encoding systems are highly non-intuitive and have a reputation of sharp learning curves, frustration is expected. This is because, in general, Chinese or Kanji characters are expected to be pronounced or written by the speakers, not to be indexed in a particular encoding system. Only the pronunciation is the natural form in the language. The encoding schemes are completely foreign, arbitrary to the native speakers. Using them requires extensive and systematic training. In mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, in the 80-90s, learning to use a computer often starts from learning the code, and it needs at least two months of mechanical memorization to get started, and years of use to master it, just like how amateur radio operators learn Morse Code (edit: well, you don't need to memorize the code for every single character as if it's Morse Code, but remembering the standard decomposition of characters in the system is comparable to rememebr the Morse Code table). And remember, these are native speakers, much greater effort is needed for foreign speakers. Sure, schemes based on radicals have been used for a thousand years in dictionaries, but all of these schemes used today are a completely artificial creation for typing and searching things into/from computers (often on those with very limited computing power). The increase of processing power of personal computers in the late 90s allowed phonetic input systems to map pronunciation to characters heuristically, with high correctness rate. So those codes are rarely used by Chinese, and Japanese speakers (I believe) today. Unless you've learned computing in the during 80s to mid 90s, or you have a job related to language or word processing that requires typing tens of thousands of characters or creating/searching them in a language-related database, or you are someone who emphasize typing efficiency. > Because I was interested in typing characters while not actually knowing the kanji. This is actually a common requirement for people with those jobs, and one of the biggest reason to keep using them. It is especially useful when transcribing texts to computers or searching them in a database. Users also argue that, using them help preventing the modern disease of forgetting the writing of characters due to computerization, which I do see a point, similar to the spell-checker problem in English education.
jwong_ 7y ago
Imagine having your contact list sorted by some geometric function run on each letter of the A-Z alphabet.
- trw999 7y ago
  That would be marginally better than memorizing ABCDEFGHIJKMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. Is there anything inherent about the letter A that makes it get sorted in front of the letter Z?
fenomas 7y ago
> Do Japanese users actually expect names to be sorted phonetically? Yes - or that's how a human would sort them, at any rate.
- trw999 7y ago
  I don't think you're in a position to speak for all of humanity.
  - fenomas 7y ago
    I meant a human as opposed to an algorithm. Point being: kanji words aren't always sorted phonetically, for the reasons described in the article, so a user may not be surprised if they aren't. But when a human is sorting kanji words they do so phonetically by reading.
- radicsge 7y ago
  Think about numbers, it is not sorted phonetically, Even the alphabet is not. All those languages that use alphabet sort in exactly the same order regardless the pronunciation.
Grue3 7y ago
>Do Japanese users actually expect names to be sorted phonetically? Yes. Usually when there's a list of things you'd see subsections like あ (words that start with a vowel), か (words that start with "k" or "g"), さ (words that start with "s" or "z") and so on, and there's a specific order within each subsection.
LeoDT 7y ago
East-Asians usually put the last name before the first name, and most Japanese last name pronounced different, so there is no problem to them phonetically.

by trw999 7y ago

aidenn0 7y ago

Kanji in Japanese are sorted by writing them out phonetically in Kana and then sorting by the kana. English speakers don't expect names to be sorted by IPA because most English speakers don't know IPA, but all Japanese speakers do know the kana. The fact that they are sorted as-if written in kana means that the exact same written character will be sorted differently according to context. For "not names" we actually do have fairly good algorithms for determining the pronunciation of Kanji, but for many names there is literally no way to know how to pronounce them without asking.

cooper12 7y ago

I actually made a serious attempt at learning the Four-Corner Method for kanji [0] and it was very frustrating. It would be difficult to determine what parts of the kanji belonged to which corner, and which exact shape they corresponded to. And strokes wouldn't always be interpreted the way I thought they'd be since it's based on a handwritten representation of the character. Many characters also have multiple FC numbers! The FC method was never meant to uniquely identify specific characters, but just to help narrow down a list of candidates in a dictionary. Funnily enough, I also argue something similar in this thread that has the same drawbacks :) [0]: Because I was interested in typing characters while not actually knowing the kanji. The Tagaini Jisho app (https://www.tagaini.net/ https://www.tagaini.net/) was indispensable because it lets you search on multiple parameters including partial FC # and simpler methods like SKIP codes (http://nihongo.monash.edu/SKIP.html http://nihongo.monash.edu/SKIP.html). The only characters I couldn't transcribe with this method were those printed so small that the individual strokes were difficult to make out.

segfaultbuserr 7y ago
Don't know about Japanese, but other well-known input schemes for Chinese includes Cangjie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cangjie_input_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cangjie_input_method), Zhengma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhengma_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhengma_method), and Wubi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubi_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubi_method). In fact, all of these non-phonetic input/encoding systems are highly non-intuitive and have a reputation of sharp learning curves, frustration is expected. This is because, in general, Chinese or Kanji characters are expected to be pronounced or written by the speakers, not to be indexed in a particular encoding system. Only the pronunciation is the natural form in the language. The encoding schemes are completely foreign, arbitrary to the native speakers. Using them requires extensive and systematic training. In mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, in the 80-90s, learning to use a computer often starts from learning the code, and it needs at least two months of mechanical memorization to get started, and years of use to master it, just like how amateur radio operators learn Morse Code (edit: well, you don't need to memorize the code for every single character as if it's Morse Code, but remembering the standard decomposition of characters in the system is comparable to rememebr the Morse Code table). And remember, these are native speakers, much greater effort is needed for foreign speakers. Sure, schemes based on radicals have been used for a thousand years in dictionaries, but all of these schemes used today are a completely artificial creation for typing and searching things into/from computers (often on those with very limited computing power). The increase of processing power of personal computers in the late 90s allowed phonetic input systems to map pronunciation to characters heuristically, with high correctness rate. So those codes are rarely used by Chinese, and Japanese speakers (I believe) today. Unless you've learned computing in the during 80s to mid 90s, or you have a job related to language or word processing that requires typing tens of thousands of characters or creating/searching them in a language-related database, or you are someone who emphasize typing efficiency. > Because I was interested in typing characters while not actually knowing the kanji. This is actually a common requirement for people with those jobs, and one of the biggest reason to keep using them. It is especially useful when transcribing texts to computers or searching them in a database. Users also argue that, using them help preventing the modern disease of forgetting the writing of characters due to computerization, which I do see a point, similar to the spell-checker problem in English education.

jwong_ 7y ago

Imagine having your contact list sorted by some geometric function run on each letter of the A-Z alphabet.

trw999 7y ago
That would be marginally better than memorizing ABCDEFGHIJKMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. Is there anything inherent about the letter A that makes it get sorted in front of the letter Z?

fenomas 7y ago

> Do Japanese users actually expect names to be sorted phonetically? Yes - or that's how a human would sort them, at any rate.

trw999 7y ago
I don't think you're in a position to speak for all of humanity.
- fenomas 7y ago
  I meant a human as opposed to an algorithm. Point being: kanji words aren't always sorted phonetically, for the reasons described in the article, so a user may not be surprised if they aren't. But when a human is sorting kanji words they do so phonetically by reading.
radicsge 7y ago
Think about numbers, it is not sorted phonetically, Even the alphabet is not. All those languages that use alphabet sort in exactly the same order regardless the pronunciation.

Grue3 7y ago

>Do Japanese users actually expect names to be sorted phonetically? Yes. Usually when there's a list of things you'd see subsections like あ (words that start with a vowel), か (words that start with "k" or "g"), さ (words that start with "s" or "z") and so on, and there's a specific order within each subsection.

LeoDT 7y ago

East-Asians usually put the last name before the first name, and most Japanese last name pronounced different, so there is no problem to them phonetically.