Re: Mixed writing systems (WAS: Newbie says hi)

>>The japanese use of chinese characher (kanji) is closer to what you think.
>>They use kanji without any phonetic values to write the many words they
>>borowed to chinese language(which use could be vaguely considered similar
>>to latin roots in romance languages) , nouns, as well as verbs and
>>adjective stem. They use a separate sillabary (hiragana) to note all the
>>"gramatical stuff" : post-positions, inflexions... Note that this silabary
>>is also used to subtitle or even replace the chinese charachers that are
>>too difficult to memorise.
>>And this would have be too easy. They also have a second sillabary
>>(katakana) with the exact same phonetic values, used for writing loan
>>words, or for emphasys.
>
>I *think* I understand this picture, but it's a little different from what I
>had understood previously. I think I'd got the impression that all three
>systems could be used independently. In particular I remember reading about
>how in the Middle Ages Japanese women produced far more works of literature
>than men. The reason was that women were not taught kanji, because it was
>seen as harder, and they were expected not to be able to manage it. Whereas
>the men were expected to be able to, so they had to struggle with it to
>write anything. Since the syllabaries are basically easier (they are geared
>towards actual Japanese phonology) women in fact found it much easier to
>write than men, and hence they wrote much more. Ludicrous, but true - or is
>it? What you say suggests the syllabaries are only used to complement and
>complete kanji.
As I wrote, the hiragana sillabary can be use instead of kanji when the characher
you want to write is to difficult. Since women of that time didn't know kanji,
they just replaced everything with hiragana. There is no technical dificulty to
do it. It is just not the common use. And it is actualy easyer to write. But
when it comes to reading, the effect is just the oposite. If you write english
with phonetic phonetics just because you don't want to struggle with the
spelling, it migth be easier to write, and possible to read. Nonetheless there
are many words you can not distinguish. "to two too" are the same...
Considering that japanese language (writen with or without kanji) do not mark
spaces between words,as quite many asian language do, the lack of such
information makes it difficult to know where a word begin and ends.
Also note that writting nowadays gets easier, with the use of computers.


>>What make the use of chinese characters dificult in japanese, is that a
>>single kanji often have many readings: the "original" (yet modified through
>>borowing prosses) chinese reading, and the various pronounciation of the
>>(some times many) japanese concepts that fit into a single characher. only
>>the context, that is which gramatical function or which compound, allow to
>>know the actual pronounciation.
>
>What you are describing is a classic case of a writing system being totally
>unsuited to a language. Japanese and Chinese are after all totally different
>morphologically (and hence typologically).
yes, the chinese writing system was devised for an totaly different language. And
the use of pure kanji without any sillabary is almost impossible in japanese.
But the modification of the system makes it, if not easy, at least usable.

>>This pronounciation problem makes the system quite long to master. On the
>>other hand, once you know it, the reading is incredibly efficient. From the
>>first look, you can catch the main words, and then pay more attention to
>>the gramatical details.
>
>But doesn't it make it more inefficient: for instance you are having to look
>at several different elements to understand the meaning of the *same* word.
No, it doesn't. If you want to read the sentence for the beginning to the end, the
different graphic style won't bother you at all, they will even be helpfull
since it is the only way to delimitate the words(you could say that is would
have been easier to separate words. ok, that's true. But note that the
aglutinating nature of the language does not make it always very easy to know
what is a word). What i mean is a simple glimpse to the text will strike you
with the main ideas.
I was once strike by one thing. I was watching a japanese anime (that is
animation movie or series). from times to times, there was a black screen with
some text (a couple of sentences). As i could not (and still can not)
understand enough of japanese to read the original version, i just read the
subtitles. I definitly didn't have enough time to read it. No way. But in
japanese, this text is actualy supposed to be read.

>>If you don't belevie that using ideograms is more efficient to catch the
>>meaning, just think of the closest thing to ideograms we have in english:
>>numbers.
>
>I take your point here, but this is just ideograms. That would suggest that
>the Chinese system is even easier.
Yes. And no. Provided you know every thing of the sentence, the chinese system is
rather easy to read (though is does not have the "understand in a glimpse"
effect). But whenever there is a word you don't know in the sentence(which can
even occur to native speaker), Trouble can start. Why? First, there is nothing
like the "hiragana subtitles" to tell you how the new character is pronounced.
But this is not the main problem. Chinese does not separated the words either.
So when you come to an undidentified word, it can upset you for finding where
other words start or end. is this (those) unknown characher(s) to be seen as
independent, or compound this the surounding ones? should it be linked with the
one before or after? and with how many. Well let's try to link it with the next
one. No the rest of the sentence doesn't make sense. Read it as isolated? ah,
ok now i get it. You see what kind of problem you can run into. This is not
only due the absence of separation between word!
s, but also to the fact that a characher can be use either single or compounded,
as a verb, a noun, a preposition, an adjective... take "zai" for exemple, it
can mean "to be in some place", "at, in", or in the compound "xianzai" as "now"

Have a look at the following sentence : "WoXianZaiQuMeiGuo". It should be read :
Wo(I) XianZai(now) Qu(go) MeiGuo(USA). = I am going to the usa

Now suppose you don't know Xian. At the first reading you might try somethig like
WoXian(my "xian") Zai (is in) QuMeiGuo (????) = My xian is in QuMeiGuo.

It does not work. But you could also think of it as:
Wo(I) Xian(could be a verb) Zai(at) QuMeiGuo(????) = I xian at QuMeiGuo.

This example is a bit stupid be cause no chinese would miss this word, but it other
cases, it could happen; Especially if it involve loan words, or proper names.
You can almost always manage, but it is not nececarly obvious.

This can not happen in japanese, since the words carring concept are visualy
separeted by hiragana. Not only you know which is the word, but you also have
its grammatical function. But it can happen in japanese writen only in
hiragana(like these women writers did). It is even worse, since words tend to
have more syllables in japanese, the subdivision problem can be terrible.

>>Once you manage to learn the system, the whole language gets this easy and
>>fast to read. ... I personaly consider the japanese writing system to be
>>the most efficient and confortable system to the READer, though it is a bit
>>harder to WRITE, and quite awfull to LEARN.
>
>That is the point tho, it is not just about how easy it is to absorb or
>produce meaning from a writing system, but also how long it takes you to get
>to the point where you can do so in the first place. Consider the claims
>that an entire year of children's education is wasted learning irregular
>spellings in English and getting over it to be able to read and write. How
>much longer does it take to learn an ideographic system, how much education
>time does it eat up?
How much time? a whole life. Or to talk about school time, most of it. But it has
intersting side effects.
On the cultural point of view, hanzi(in china) or kanji(in japan) ar object of
knowledge by them-selves. Caligraphy is considered as the finest form of arts,
and painting often uses the same technics and tools as caligraphy. It is not so
easy to separate painting from caligraphy.
On the individual point of view, It develops memory skills. You meet a girl want
to give her your phone number, but have nothing to write? no problem, just tell
her, she'll most probably remeber it. And it also works for less "romantic'
affairs.

Another advantage of using this kind of system is when it comes to international
understanding. In the past, when all "the civilised word" (china, japan, korea,
vietnam...)wrote chinese charachers, travelers (and merchants) were not in
trouble if they got in contact with someone speaking a different language. Just
write charachers in the sand of the beach where you just landed, and
communication is established. And the must have been pretty upset when the
first european got there, not even able to understand charachers!

With our alphabet, we have the impression that we can read most languages of the
world. Generaly speaking the pronounciation will be so diferent, that it is not
understandable, and there is no way to get to the meaning. For people using
chinese charachers, the problem is different. There is no way to pronouce it,
but you can guess (at least approximately) what it is about. At culivated
japanese who never learned chinese could understand enough of a chinese news
paper to give you a simple summ up.

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