18 ms·
That's not how Japanese works. Yes Japanese uses Chinese characters that's only a subset of Japanese. Japanese sentences are typically a bit longer than English
by japgolly 6y ago
That's not how Japanese works. Yes Japanese uses Chinese characters that's only a subset of Japanese. Japanese sentences are typically a bit longer than English in terms of syllables and written length - their main reduction technique at the language level is omission, rarely efficiency improvement.
- Why's it so hot today? = 6 syllables
- Nande konna ni atsui no kyou? = 10 syllables (spoken colloquially)
What about written length? You can see the Japanese sentence is a little longer here (when the English uses a non-monospaced font). It's also enough to demonstrates the why using kanji doesn't always provide the huge reduction/compression that you're expecting.
- Why's it so hot today?
- なんでこんなに暑いの今日？
- fyolnish 6y agoWhy’s it so hot today? 何でこんなに暑いの今日？ Where in the US are you from? 出身は米国の何処ですか? Japanese sentences are usually shorter than the english translation.
- s1300045 6y agoI speak Mandarin Chinese. They are kind of similar. 今天怎麼這麼熱？ 美國那來的？
- Jach 6y agoFor paid translations, English likes to charge by the word, whereas Japanese charges by the character. The rule of thumb for conversion is 2 JP characters --> 1 English word i.e. translating a 1000 character JP document you'll expect about 500 EN words at the end.
- cambalache 6y ago> Japanese sentences are typically a bit longer than English in terms of syllables and written length? Do you understand than 1 kana represents 1 syllable? They are BY DEFINITION, more concise than Latin letters.
- japgolly 6y agoWow thanks! I didn't understand that despite being able to read and write Japanese! Sarcasm aside you don't seem to have a very deep understanding so maybe you should be a bit nicer when expressing your opinion. > 1 kana represents 1 syllable ちゅ <-- 2 kana, 1 syllable > BY DEFINITION, more concise than Latin letters smash <-- 1 syllable, 5 latin letters, ~3 kana in length スマッシュ <-- 5 kana