20 ms·

Now I need to know if this is also satire or if I need to start learning Japanese

BlargMcLarg 4y ago
It's a language with over 2k common characters of which most have two pronunciations, and the language is immensely context-dependent. If that doesn't scare you, go ahead.
- contravariant 4y ago
  It's not that bad, most sequences of kanji have just a single (common) way to pronounce them. Although some sequences are completely new, so you need to figure out which word ends where. And the most commonly used kanji also have the highest number of different pronunciations, sometimes in several ways that are impossible to tell apart grammatically (or even semantically, obviously this is almost never annotated, because adding the pronunciation is for words the author thinks you don't know, even when the pronunciation is entirely unambiguous*) *: No I'm not bitter I had way too much trouble figuring out how to annotate Japanese text with the pronunciation to make it vaguely readable, why do you ask?
  - innocentoldguy 4y ago
    Most Kanji have at least two ways to pronounce them, the On reading and the Kun reading. For example, 水 (meaning water) can be pronounced as both “Mizu” and “Sui.” Some have a lot more. 下 has two On readings (Ka and Ge) and several Kun readings (Shita, Shimo, Moto, Sa, Kuda, and O). While combinations typically do have one reading, some can have multiple readings, especially people’s names. Still, it is hard for learners to know which reading for individual Kanji’s are the right ones a lot of times. EDIT: Fixed a couple of typos and a premature submit.
    - contravariant 4y ago
      While those readings might be technically possible, usually only a few of them form a known word. For instance 水 in isolation is (almost?) never pronounced 'sui'. To say it has 2 different pronunciations is a bit like pointing out 'ou' has about 4~5 different pronunciations in English.
      - innocentoldguy 4y ago
        Thanks for your reply. Maybe I can help clear this up a bit. > "While those readings might be technically possible, usually only a few of them form a known word." Are you suggesting that these various readings are academic and not commonly used? If so, that is incorrect. All the readings are used in common words. Here are examples of both the On and Kun readings for the kanji 水 being used: 水道: Pronounced "suido" and means "water supply" or "water service." 水着: Pronounced "mizugi" and means "swimsuit." Here are examples of both the On readings for the kanji 下 being used: 下降: Pronounced "kakou" and means "descent." 下水: Pronounced "gesui" and means "sewer." Here are examples of all the Kun readings for the kanji 下 being used: 下着: Pronounced "shitagi" and means "underwear." 下々: Pronounced "shimojimo" and means "commoners" or "common people". 法の下 (can also be written as 法の元): Pronounced "hounomoto" and means "under the law." 下さい: Pronounced "kudasai" and means "please." 下りる: Pronounced "oriru" and means "to get off." Your comparison to the various pronunciations of "ou" in English seems off as well. For example, if you mispronounce "cough" using the "ou" pronunciation of "rough," you'll sound weird but will most likely be understood. However, if you misread "oriru" (下りる) as "kariru," using the On reading "KA" instead of the correct Kun reading, you'd be verbalizing a completely different word. Instead of telling others you're getting off of something, you'd be saying you're borrowing something. I'd characterize your example of "ou" as a mispronunciation in English, whereas your example in Japanese would be a misreading. I hope this helps. EDIT: Fixed a typo.
        contravariant 4y ago
        Thanks for the detailed response. I think I do understand your point. In my (limited) experience so far however I find myself remembering the words themselves, rather than work out their pronunciation from their constituent kanji. To me working from the pronunciations of the kanji themselves is like trying to pronounce 'cough' by fitting together pronunciations for 'c', 'ou', and 'gh' (all of which have several options interestingly enough).
- nine_k 4y ago
  Kanji are fun to learn, because they are constructive to some degree, and actually pictorial to some degree. If you can imagine a language where 2k+ emoji are used as parts of words, with all the combination rules which emoji have, that would give you some idea. But it does tax your memory (nothing compared to Chinese, though!), and takes time when writing by hand. Typing is significantly easier because a reasonable IME gives you variants to choose from when you type the pronunciation.
  - yomkippur 4y ago
    > Kanji are fun to learn, huge nuance here. it is not fun memorizing hyroglyphics
  - Judgmentality 4y ago
    > Kanji are fun to learn, because they are constructive to some degree, and actually pictorial to some degree > actually pictorial to some degree Only in the same sense that star constellations are pictorial. https://youtu.be/unKrseRCOKo https://youtu.be/unKrseRCOKo I really feel like this is appropriate.
    - Izkata 4y ago
      There are some that are kinda funny when you first see them, for example: Tree: 木 Forest: 森
      - thematrixturtle 4y ago
        Person: 人 Rest: 休 (person leaning against a tree)
        hypertele-Xii 4y ago
        So you can't say "rest" without mentioning a tree? Finnish is funny in similar ways due to its ubiquitous forests. To "hunt" is "metsästää", "metsä" being "forest" the place you went to look for food.
amyjess 4y ago
Japanese grammar is starkly minimalist. It's not hard to learn at all, the basic structure is almost purely agglutinative, and the word order is consistently head-final in all cases (e.g. SOV for sentence and modifier-modified for not only adjectives but also relative and appositive clauses), and it helps that Japanese doesn't grammatically track several things that other languages do, such as person, number, or gender. There are only two real problems: 1. The writing system is ridiculously complex, and even if you just vow to only write in romaji you also have to deal with the problem that kanji acts as a huge source of both puns and compound words. You can invent new compound words just by jamming together the on readings of a couple of kanji and most Japanese people will understand you. It's also not unheard of in, for example, songs, to pronounce a word one way when singing but write it in the official lyrics sheet using kanji that's normally associated with a completely different word. The closest I can compare to this in other languages would be like if you were talking and using sign language at the same time and you were deliberately signing different words than what you were speaking in order to add subtext. 2. Because a) so many features aren't grammatically tracked and b) Japanese is aggressively pro-drop, a lot of sentences are extremely ambiguous without context. For example, you often can't tell just from hearing the words if someone is saying "I go", "you go", "they go", "he goes", or "she goes" (in Japanese these are all just iku/ikimasu... unless you're going out of your way to put a pronoun in there, but most people don't); you have to parse the sentence in the context of what else is being said in the conversation or by what's going on around you.
- xhevahir 4y ago
  You're forgetting the difficulty of learning the elaborate system of honorifics, without which you'll be unable to talk to a native speaker without insulting them. The title of this book gives some idea: https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/4770016247/ref=nosim/librarythin06-20 https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/4770016247/ref=nosim...
  - cyphar 4y ago
    While that is technically true standard 敬語/honorifics (です/ます and a few word choices) aren't really that complicated. There are additional levels of honorifics which can be far more complicated but (outside of workplace honorifics -- which you will need to practice if you will work at a Japanese company) native speakers usually get some kind of training in how to speak in that exceptionally formal way (the kind of keigo used in restaurants is sometimes criticised for being "incorrect" Japanese and is called バイト敬語 -- usually service workers literally get handed a manual which explains how to interact with customers using this form of 敬語). If you or I had an audience with the queen we would probably also get some kind of training in how to politely speak to her. Finally, if it's obvious you're studying Japanese and you drop a です or ます the person is quite unlikely to be insulted. Especially if it's not someone who is your superior at work.
sbierwagen 4y ago
Japanese uses Chinese characters heavily, but they're obviously pronounced nothing like they are in Mandarin, and their contextual meaning has drifted over the last thousand years. Japan and China have also made many different choices in technical loanwords-- Japanese tends to transcribe loanwords directly but English is often lightly mangled by Japanese phonology: you can puzzle over キーボード (kiiboodo) for a while but unless it's in context the English word "keyboard" won't jump out.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  I had to work with some code from a Japanese manufacturer and translated some of the comments. I got stuck on デバドラ (debadora) for a while. It was clearly Japanized English but it took a while to realize it is "device driver".
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - cyphar 4y ago
    They like four-character abbreviations a lot (obviously you have 四字熟語, but most onomatopoeia are four kana, and a lot of other emphatic words are four kana). I was watching a let's play YouTuber who started referring to Breath of the Wild as ブレワイ (burewai).
    - smcl 4y ago
      I guess we do the same in English - obviously there’s using an acronym (BotW) but often people will use a single word in a multi-word title - like “Smash” for one of the Smash Brothers games
      - amyjess 4y ago
        From my experience, the Japanese love four-katakana abbrevations as much as English-speakers love our two-letter and three-letter acronyms. For example, we abbreviate "personal computer" as PC. In Japanese, it's パーソナルコンピューター (pāsonaru konpyūtā), abbreviated as パソコン (pasokon; roughly "persocom"). Similarly, "remote control" is R/C. In Japanese, it's リモートコントロール (rimōto kontorōru), abbreviated as リモコン (rimokon; roughly "remocon"). You can even see this with proprietary trademarks, such as the Nintendo Family Computer ファミリーコンピュータ (Famirī Konpyūta) abbreviated as ファミコン (Famikon; roughly "Famicom")... which I guess is four and a half katakana, but it's still four morae. And in English-speaking markets, it was sold as the Nintendo Entertainment System, which we've abbreviated as NES.
teddyh 4y ago
So You Want To Learn Japanese http://www.stmoroky.com/links/sywtlj.htm http://www.stmoroky.com/links/sywtlj.htm
Asraelite 4y ago
It is literally the hardest language to learn for English speakers. Regardless of what you hear about the elegance of its grammar, this is a real fact backed up with evidence from past learners. Know what you're getting yourself into.
- presentation 4y ago
  If you want to get to native level mastery and full literacy, but learning it to conversational proficiency is actually quite easy.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    Say you. But I’ve been trying to do that for 4 years, with weekly lessons, in Japan, and I’m still having difficulty. It’s certainly not easy for everyone.
    - presentation 4y ago
      Check out Cure Dolly on YouTube and weep at the poor quality of instruction that you’re probably receiving. Also I don’t know how much actual conversational practice you get from day to day life - but at least for me, I talk with my wife and my (mostly Japanese) friends in Japanese for hours every day, and that makes a huge difference. Once a week would simply not be enough.
- glandium 4y ago
  As someone who speaks Japanese, I think Chinese is harder.

It's a language with over 2k common characters of which most have two pronunciations, and the language is immensely context-dependent. If that doesn't scare you, go ahead.

contravariant 4y ago
It's not that bad, most sequences of kanji have just a single (common) way to pronounce them. Although some sequences are completely new, so you need to figure out which word ends where. And the most commonly used kanji also have the highest number of different pronunciations, sometimes in several ways that are impossible to tell apart grammatically (or even semantically, obviously this is almost never annotated, because adding the pronunciation is for words the author thinks you don't know, even when the pronunciation is entirely unambiguous*) *: No I'm not bitter I had way too much trouble figuring out how to annotate Japanese text with the pronunciation to make it vaguely readable, why do you ask?
- innocentoldguy 4y ago
  Most Kanji have at least two ways to pronounce them, the On reading and the Kun reading. For example, 水 (meaning water) can be pronounced as both “Mizu” and “Sui.” Some have a lot more. 下 has two On readings (Ka and Ge) and several Kun readings (Shita, Shimo, Moto, Sa, Kuda, and O). While combinations typically do have one reading, some can have multiple readings, especially people’s names. Still, it is hard for learners to know which reading for individual Kanji’s are the right ones a lot of times. EDIT: Fixed a couple of typos and a premature submit.
  - contravariant 4y ago
    While those readings might be technically possible, usually only a few of them form a known word. For instance 水 in isolation is (almost?) never pronounced 'sui'. To say it has 2 different pronunciations is a bit like pointing out 'ou' has about 4~5 different pronunciations in English.
    - innocentoldguy 4y ago
      Thanks for your reply. Maybe I can help clear this up a bit. > "While those readings might be technically possible, usually only a few of them form a known word." Are you suggesting that these various readings are academic and not commonly used? If so, that is incorrect. All the readings are used in common words. Here are examples of both the On and Kun readings for the kanji 水 being used: 水道: Pronounced "suido" and means "water supply" or "water service." 水着: Pronounced "mizugi" and means "swimsuit." Here are examples of both the On readings for the kanji 下 being used: 下降: Pronounced "kakou" and means "descent." 下水: Pronounced "gesui" and means "sewer." Here are examples of all the Kun readings for the kanji 下 being used: 下着: Pronounced "shitagi" and means "underwear." 下々: Pronounced "shimojimo" and means "commoners" or "common people". 法の下 (can also be written as 法の元): Pronounced "hounomoto" and means "under the law." 下さい: Pronounced "kudasai" and means "please." 下りる: Pronounced "oriru" and means "to get off." Your comparison to the various pronunciations of "ou" in English seems off as well. For example, if you mispronounce "cough" using the "ou" pronunciation of "rough," you'll sound weird but will most likely be understood. However, if you misread "oriru" (下りる) as "kariru," using the On reading "KA" instead of the correct Kun reading, you'd be verbalizing a completely different word. Instead of telling others you're getting off of something, you'd be saying you're borrowing something. I'd characterize your example of "ou" as a mispronunciation in English, whereas your example in Japanese would be a misreading. I hope this helps. EDIT: Fixed a typo.
      - contravariant 4y ago
        Thanks for the detailed response. I think I do understand your point. In my (limited) experience so far however I find myself remembering the words themselves, rather than work out their pronunciation from their constituent kanji. To me working from the pronunciations of the kanji themselves is like trying to pronounce 'cough' by fitting together pronunciations for 'c', 'ou', and 'gh' (all of which have several options interestingly enough).
nine_k 4y ago
Kanji are fun to learn, because they are constructive to some degree, and actually pictorial to some degree. If you can imagine a language where 2k+ emoji are used as parts of words, with all the combination rules which emoji have, that would give you some idea. But it does tax your memory (nothing compared to Chinese, though!), and takes time when writing by hand. Typing is significantly easier because a reasonable IME gives you variants to choose from when you type the pronunciation.
- yomkippur 4y ago
  > Kanji are fun to learn, huge nuance here. it is not fun memorizing hyroglyphics
- Judgmentality 4y ago
  > Kanji are fun to learn, because they are constructive to some degree, and actually pictorial to some degree > actually pictorial to some degree Only in the same sense that star constellations are pictorial. https://youtu.be/unKrseRCOKo https://youtu.be/unKrseRCOKo I really feel like this is appropriate.
  - Izkata 4y ago
    There are some that are kinda funny when you first see them, for example: Tree: 木 Forest: 森
    - thematrixturtle 4y ago
      Person: 人 Rest: 休 (person leaning against a tree)
      - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
        So you can't say "rest" without mentioning a tree? Finnish is funny in similar ways due to its ubiquitous forests. To "hunt" is "metsästää", "metsä" being "forest" the place you went to look for food.

amyjess 4y ago

Japanese grammar is starkly minimalist. It's not hard to learn at all, the basic structure is almost purely agglutinative, and the word order is consistently head-final in all cases (e.g. SOV for sentence and modifier-modified for not only adjectives but also relative and appositive clauses), and it helps that Japanese doesn't grammatically track several things that other languages do, such as person, number, or gender. There are only two real problems: 1. The writing system is ridiculously complex, and even if you just vow to only write in romaji you also have to deal with the problem that kanji acts as a huge source of both puns and compound words. You can invent new compound words just by jamming together the on readings of a couple of kanji and most Japanese people will understand you. It's also not unheard of in, for example, songs, to pronounce a word one way when singing but write it in the official lyrics sheet using kanji that's normally associated with a completely different word. The closest I can compare to this in other languages would be like if you were talking and using sign language at the same time and you were deliberately signing different words than what you were speaking in order to add subtext. 2. Because a) so many features aren't grammatically tracked and b) Japanese is aggressively pro-drop, a lot of sentences are extremely ambiguous without context. For example, you often can't tell just from hearing the words if someone is saying "I go", "you go", "they go", "he goes", or "she goes" (in Japanese these are all just iku/ikimasu... unless you're going out of your way to put a pronoun in there, but most people don't); you have to parse the sentence in the context of what else is being said in the conversation or by what's going on around you.

xhevahir 4y ago
You're forgetting the difficulty of learning the elaborate system of honorifics, without which you'll be unable to talk to a native speaker without insulting them. The title of this book gives some idea: https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/4770016247/ref=nosim/librarythin06-20 https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/4770016247/ref=nosim...
- cyphar 4y ago
  While that is technically true standard 敬語/honorifics (です/ます and a few word choices) aren't really that complicated. There are additional levels of honorifics which can be far more complicated but (outside of workplace honorifics -- which you will need to practice if you will work at a Japanese company) native speakers usually get some kind of training in how to speak in that exceptionally formal way (the kind of keigo used in restaurants is sometimes criticised for being "incorrect" Japanese and is called バイト敬語 -- usually service workers literally get handed a manual which explains how to interact with customers using this form of 敬語). If you or I had an audience with the queen we would probably also get some kind of training in how to politely speak to her. Finally, if it's obvious you're studying Japanese and you drop a です or ます the person is quite unlikely to be insulted. Especially if it's not someone who is your superior at work.

sbierwagen 4y ago

Japanese uses Chinese characters heavily, but they're obviously pronounced nothing like they are in Mandarin, and their contextual meaning has drifted over the last thousand years. Japan and China have also made many different choices in technical loanwords-- Japanese tends to transcribe loanwords directly but English is often lightly mangled by Japanese phonology: you can puzzle over キーボード (kiiboodo) for a while but unless it's in context the English word "keyboard" won't jump out.

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
I had to work with some code from a Japanese manufacturer and translated some of the comments. I got stuck on デバドラ (debadora) for a while. It was clearly Japanized English but it took a while to realize it is "device driver".
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- cyphar 4y ago
  They like four-character abbreviations a lot (obviously you have 四字熟語, but most onomatopoeia are four kana, and a lot of other emphatic words are four kana). I was watching a let's play YouTuber who started referring to Breath of the Wild as ブレワイ (burewai).
  - smcl 4y ago
    I guess we do the same in English - obviously there’s using an acronym (BotW) but often people will use a single word in a multi-word title - like “Smash” for one of the Smash Brothers games
    - amyjess 4y ago
      From my experience, the Japanese love four-katakana abbrevations as much as English-speakers love our two-letter and three-letter acronyms. For example, we abbreviate "personal computer" as PC. In Japanese, it's パーソナルコンピューター (pāsonaru konpyūtā), abbreviated as パソコン (pasokon; roughly "persocom"). Similarly, "remote control" is R/C. In Japanese, it's リモートコントロール (rimōto kontorōru), abbreviated as リモコン (rimokon; roughly "remocon"). You can even see this with proprietary trademarks, such as the Nintendo Family Computer ファミリーコンピュータ (Famirī Konpyūta) abbreviated as ファミコン (Famikon; roughly "Famicom")... which I guess is four and a half katakana, but it's still four morae. And in English-speaking markets, it was sold as the Nintendo Entertainment System, which we've abbreviated as NES.

teddyh 4y ago

So You Want To Learn Japanese http://www.stmoroky.com/links/sywtlj.htm http://www.stmoroky.com/links/sywtlj.htm

Asraelite 4y ago

It is literally the hardest language to learn for English speakers. Regardless of what you hear about the elegance of its grammar, this is a real fact backed up with evidence from past learners. Know what you're getting yourself into.

presentation 4y ago
If you want to get to native level mastery and full literacy, but learning it to conversational proficiency is actually quite easy.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Say you. But I’ve been trying to do that for 4 years, with weekly lessons, in Japan, and I’m still having difficulty. It’s certainly not easy for everyone.
  - presentation 4y ago
    Check out Cure Dolly on YouTube and weep at the poor quality of instruction that you’re probably receiving. Also I don’t know how much actual conversational practice you get from day to day life - but at least for me, I talk with my wife and my (mostly Japanese) friends in Japanese for hours every day, and that makes a huge difference. Once a week would simply not be enough.
glandium 4y ago
As someone who speaks Japanese, I think Chinese is harder.