{"id":53,"date":"2003-12-20T06:30:41","date_gmt":"2003-12-19T21:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/archives\/2003\/12\/20\/drdave-single-handedly-reforms-the-japanese-writing-system\/"},"modified":"2005-07-12T21:58:27","modified_gmt":"2005-07-12T12:58:27","slug":"drdave-single-handedly-reforms-the-japanese-writing-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/archives\/2003\/12\/20\/drdave-single-handedly-reforms-the-japanese-writing-system\/","title":{"rendered":"DrDave Single-Handedly Reforms the Japanese Writing System"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Though I cannot think of a more illogical, irrational, excruciatingly frustrating way to code a language than Japanese Kanji, I am slowly starting to realize how essential it is to its language structure&#8230; <\/p>\n<p\/>OK, let me precise what I mean here: no matter how seducing the idea, there&#8217;s no way Japanese text could ever be written with a simpler character set (be it <a href=\"http:\/\/everything2.net\/index.pl?node_id=695163\">romaji<\/a> transliteration or <a href=\"http:\/\/everything2.net\/index.pl?node_id=627762\">kanas<\/a>). <\/p>\n<p\/>This is no complete news to me: discussions with Japanese had already opened my eyes to the fact that it would be really tough for a native to quickly read a text without the immediate visual help that&#8217;s brought by the symbolic meaning of kanjis.<\/p>\n<p\/>Today went a step further, after receiving a short mail on my phone from a japanese friend, who for some strange reason, exceptionally typed it in romaji: Despite my less than stellar kanji-reading abilities, I found myself having to ask him to resend it in kanjis, as there was just no way I could figure out the different possible meanings for every other combination of syllables (my very loose grasp of japanese verb conjugation associated with Japanese language&#8217;s love of short homonyms did not help). I know it sounds strange that a pathetically unskilled speaker like me might prefer undecipherable kanjis over easy-to-read phonetic characters&#8230; But believe me: it&#8217;s much easier to take a guess or use a dictionary to figure out the meaning of a particular kanji than take a guess by the pronunciation only.<\/p>\n<p\/>That being said, kanji still sucks. Its constructions defies any attempt at using logic and escape any philological rule. I&#8217;m still waiting on valid sensible explanations as to why so many japanese words can be written with a choice of three or four radically different <b>kanjis<\/b> that all have the <b>same meaning<\/b> and the <b>same pronunciation<\/b> (if you don&#8217;t believe me, check out in a dictionary \u5e30\u308b and \u8fd4\u308b, both pronounced \u304b\u3048\u308b &#8211; <i>kaeru<\/i>, both meaning &#8220;to go back&#8221;&#8230; But each using completely unrelated kanjis).<br \/>\n<br \/>A workmate I was discussing with told me I was way too <i>rational<\/i> in my approach to kanji learning. She even suggested I tried zen meditation or something to create a sufficient void in my mind before taking on that task&#8230; <br \/>\nMe, too freakin&#8217; <i>rational<\/i>??? Now come on&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Though I cannot think of a more illogical, irrational, excruciatingly frustrating way to code a language than Japanese Kanji, I am slowly starting to realize how essential it is to the Japanese language structure&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-only-in-japan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}