nesdev.org

In reaction to what tepples said in his post.

It's incredible how some kanas are extremely close to eachother. No only that, but the ones that looks mostly alike are a different vowel AND a different consonant.

Those which are bugging me are :

セ (se), ヒ (hi) and と (to)

コ (ko) and ユ (yu)

フ (fu) and つ (tsu)

チ (chi) and モ (mo)

る(ru) and ろ (ro)

ワ (wa) and ク (ku)

and of course :
シ (shi) and ツ (tsu), and ノ (no) which follows a character with a dakuten, as in ベノ
ン (n) and ソ (so) and リ (ri)

In the first cases they are close but there is a little detail that you should look out to know which character reads. But in the later 2 cases, there is really no way to tell AND there is 3 possibilities.

The only conclusion is that japanese people are so racist they wanted to welcome to hell any foreigner who tries to learn their language.

Try learning Dutch instead, it's a western language, you'll pick it up

http://membler-industries.com/jero32/scheveningen.ogg

The worst is, giving the context, and my very sparse knowledge of german, I guessed what you said.

And, I am NOT trying to learn japanese, just to read and write the alphabet.

The kana make a lot more sense when you factor in stroke order, which is admittedly tough to pull off using bitmapped fonts. The thickness of the pen or brushstroke can disambiguate similar characters. Plus, context helps too. I mean, capital I and lowercase l are identical in English, but you know a capital I won't come in the middle of a word.

And there's certainly no inherent racism to a language's structure.

O, Q and D
E/F, F/P, P/R
more- "Unambiguous-looking letters and numbers" question at stackoverflow.

Sure sounds like eurocentrism to me :p

noattack wrote:The kana make a lot more sense when you factor in stroke order, which is admittedly tough to pull off using bitmapped fonts. The thickness of the pen or brushstroke can disambiguate similar characters. Plus, context helps too. I mean, capital I and lowercase l are identical in English, but you know a capital I won't come in the middle of a word.

And there's certainly no inherent racism to a language's structure.

Yes I know of the different strike direction, but it does not change much the final appearance of the character.
I know a capital I won't come in the middle of a word - but technically any kana can appear anywhere - as far I know there is no rules exclusing that.

The only rule is that both alphabets can't be merged, which leaves the abiguity of フ (fu) and つ (tsu), and of ヒ (hi) and と (to).
But what if one of these kanas appear alone, or just between a word written in hiragana and anther written in katakana, so you can't tell in which word they are ?

Also my last comment about racism was a joke, as you should have figured out.

Your list of similar-looking hiragana and katakana are pretty much (not entirely but almost) the same that I have trouble remembering. You're not alone, Bregalad.

I don't mix up katakana and hiragana, so the katakana fu vs. hiragana tsu situation doesn't really apply. However, you know what ones really chap my ass more than anything? Youon / sokuon -- you know, ゃ / ゅ / ょ / っ, which are just tiny versions of their "larger" counterparts. WTF. Now throw dakuten into the mix. Seriously WTF. It starts to look like Arabic (which is really quite neat but hard to read/write for me).

Japanese is one of the few asian languages which I wish I could truly read/write (and I'm working on that -- my neighbours consist of an American who professionally does Japanese translation for Nikon and his wife (who is Japanese), and they've finally agreed to try and help me with reading/writing) because of how often I see it used on a daily basis doing what I do. That's why when I see non-Japanese who learn it, I'm amazed they can remember it.

For me -- as someone who took 4 years of Mandarin in school, and a year of external studies as well -- I find Chinese a hell of a lot easier. Sure, "more lines", and traditional hanzi (Taiwanese) are insanely complex (ugghhh... shivering in fear...), but a 1:1 ratio of meaning-to-character makes things easier (for me anyway). Grammatically Chinese is a lot like English (with some exceptions), so sentence composition is actually quite easy. In fact, looking at original Japanese I can see where they got their kana from (chart on right) -- still stole the writing and made a bloody mess of it though.

If you want an asian language with an alphabet that's easier to learn, try Korean. Seriously. Walk in the park, and fairly logical. Reading/writing Korean is a lot of fun actually, as the language was invented for simple farmers and thus had to be simple. I'm talking purely about hangul (written), not about the language semantics when spoken (e.g. grammar, vocab, etc. -- that's a nightmare in the same way Japanese is). I actually really enjoy reading/writing Korean.

I have bits and pieces of familiarity with all sorts of other languages (Swedish, Russian, and some Afrikaans) too. I really should have gone to school and become a linguist. While I hate the complexities of languages (all of them -- and English is the worst), I find the cultural diversity and "wow, humans sure are clever!" aspect very neat.

Some notes that may help with the ones that messed me up the most, and why they are shaped the way they are:
シ has the two horizontal lines made to intersect with the tall part of し. Similarly, the two lines of ツ are made to be vertical-ish to intersect with the top horizontal part of つ.

Here's a god-awful mspaint-on-laptop drawing I made:


Furthermore, セ looks like a quick せ, helping link between Katakana and Hiragana, while ヒ looks substantially less so.
フ, being Katakana, is much pointier than つ.

Along the same lines of つ tsu and フ fu is し shi and レ re.

koitsu wrote:However, you know what ones really chap my ass more than anything? Youon / sokuon -- you know, ゃ / ゅ / ょ / っ, which are just tiny versions of their "larger" counterparts. WTF.

Canadian aboriginal syllabics have reduced-size letters used as diacritics too. As for letters being distinguished only on their size, look at 'i' and 'j', especially in some fonts. Or look at 'l' and the dotless 'i' of Turkish. Or 'a' with ring of some Nordic languages to indicate that the 'a' is long and pronounced like an 'o'.

Now throw dakuten into the mix.

Or throw the dotless 'i' of Turkish, the umlaut of German, or the diaeresis of French into the mix.

Grammatically Chinese is a lot like English (with some exceptions)

And these exceptions are where "pidgin" come from. Anyway, I'm told Japanese grammar is easier to get your head around if you've studied Latin or Russian that has case endings (-wa, -ga, -o, -no, -e, etc.), especially with the tendency of Latin (and German and Dutch for that matter) to put the verb last in several kinds of clause.

(bad pun time) Is hangul a walk in the 박 ?

While I hate the complexities of languages (all of them -- and English is the worst), I find the cultural diversity and "wow, humans sure are clever!" aspect very neat.

Have you ever got into conlangs?

For some reason I very much enjoy the Japanese grammar structure - compared to English, it's very predictable and doesn't seem to break its own rules much.

Bregalad wrote:The worst is, giving the context, and my very sparse knowledge of german, I guessed what you said.

And, I am NOT trying to learn japanese, just to read and write the alphabet.

Just out of curiosity, what did you think I said?

tepples wrote:

koitsu wrote:Grammatically Chinese is a lot like English (with some exceptions)

And these exceptions are where "pidgin" come from. Anyway, I'm told Japanese grammar is easier to get your head around if you've studied Latin or Russian that has case endings (-wa, -ga, -o, -no, -e, etc.), especially with the tendency of Latin (and German and Dutch for that matter) to put the verb last in several kinds of clause.
(bad pun time) Is hangul a walk in the 박 ?

빈수레가요란하다... (If you can't find an accurate translation for this let me know)

tepples wrote:

koitsu wrote:While I hate the complexities of languages (all of them -- and English is the worst), I find the cultural diversity and "wow, humans sure are clever!" aspect very neat.

Have you ever got into conlangs?

I have not the slightest idea what that is. I hope it's not a "langcon", as in a "language convention". *searches* Ahhh, good, it's not (neat). No, I can't say that inventing a language or constructs of a language would be something I'd enjoy. I don't think I'd get over the guilt of creating something awful. I've too much 恨...

I've learned a number of constructed alphabets over the years. Most recently the one from Ni no Kuni. In the past I remember Futurama, Alienware laptops, Commander Keen, J.R.R. Tolkien, and I'm sure there have been others I am forgetting. Many puzzle books make simple cipher problems this way.

Actually, when I took Japanese in High School, our teacher introduced katakana by giving us a sheet of English text written in katakana, with a couple of starting hints, and giving us 30 minutes or so to try and decipher it ourselves before she began teaching them. It was a fun exercise.

koitsu wrote:Your list of similar-looking hiragana and katakana are pretty much (not entirely but almost) the same that I have trouble remembering. You're not alone, Bregalad.

Thank you for your support.

However, you know what ones really chap my ass more than anything? Youon / sokuon -- you know, ゃ / ゅ / ょ / っ, which are just tiny versions of their "larger" counterparts. WTF. Now throw dakuten into the mix. Seriously WTF. It starts to look like Arabic (which is really quite neat but hard to read/write for me).

Normally the small ones can't be dakuten if I'm not mistaking. I might be wrong though.
And japanese definitely doesn't look like arabic, which looks like a signature.

[qupte]I have bits and pieces of familiarity with all sorts of other languages (Swedish, Russian, and some Afrikaans) too. I really should have gone to school and become a linguist. While I hate the complexities of languages (all of them -- and English is the worst), I find the cultural diversity and "wow, humans sure are clever!" aspect very neat.[/quote]
This is impressive.

Here's a god-awful mspaint-on-laptop drawing I made:

It is no god awful and it is very useful, thank you.

Just out of curiosity, what did you think I said?

I think you said :
Schriben in japanish ist .... (I didn't understand the last word, but probably some swearing word, giving the context).

It's actually a tongue twister "scheveningse kacheltjes" Which basically means "scheveningse" (a town) heaters.

The last part was actually my name.