Talk:Japanese writing system/Archives/2012

5 great French paragraphs

I can't read French very much, so can someone explain how an article only five paragraphs long qualifies as a featured article? Is it referring to the page plus sub-pages, or something? Most of it is clearly translated / copied from the English pages anyway. --DannyWilde 06:57, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

It seems like it might be the entire collection, which is odd: "l'ensemble d'articles est complet et (presque) en position pour postuler ici." They seem to have featured WikiPortals as well. On the other hand, I had a look at some of their other featured articles and they appear to be similar to ours (ie: longish, illustrated, complete). Exploding Boy 17:26, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually, the listing seems to be wrong, now. The French page has no star in the right hand corner to show it as a featured article. Looking through the history, it was a featured article on April 15th, 2005 (probably when the project was still small), but had it put up for removal on December 14th, which was of course passed. The German article is a featured article, but I don't speak German. It seems to be substantial, however, so maybe there's been a change since Danny made his statement 9 months ago. — ዮም | (Yom) | Talk • contribs • Ethiopia 01:02, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

The German version has less material in it that the Japanese writing pages here and the material seems to be mostly translated or copied from the English pages. --DannyWilde 06:57, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Early writing system

I'm changing the given pronunciation for 神代文字 from shindai moji to how it is actually read, kamiyo moji. There are also numerous kinds of kamiyo moji, so I am slightly reworking the text of this area to reflect that. --- Eirikr 02:17, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Also, the bit on pronunciation and on-yomi and kun-yomi appears out of place here, but I'm not sure what else to do with it, so I'm leaving it where it is. --- Eirikr 02:55, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's a year late, but the actual pronounciation is actually "jindai moji", although "jindai" can also be read "kamiyo" on it's own. I changed the articleMackan 02:12, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

I concur. 神代文字 is read as "jindai moji". Bendono 05:39, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Borrowings from Korean

チョンガー (Japanese: chongaa, Korean: 총각 — chonggak, meaning 'bachelor')

ビビンバ (Japanese: bibimba, Korean: 비빔밥 — bibimbap, a rice bowl with vegetables)

Of course they couldn't be written in Han-geul in Japanese. The only non-kana spelling Japanese could possibly borrow from Korean would be Hanja. Any Korean-speakers out there to replace Han-geul with Hanja here ? Taw 00:17, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

While I agree that Japanese wouldn't use hangeul to write these words, 비빔밥 is tricky, because as far as I know there is no hanja for this word; it's a native Korean word. There is a literal translation for the same food ("mixed meal/rice") in Chinese (拌飯 in Traditional Chinese or 拌饭 in Simplified) but I believe these are not considered hanja, since they're read differently (my dictionary says both characters are read "ban" in Korean). The main point of this section was originally to refute a mistaken "fact" posted declaring that katakana are never used for Chinese or Korean loanwords, but I see your point as well. --Che Fox 01:28, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Which of the four scripts is the most popular?

The article is vague on this point, I'd like to clear it up but i have no idea of the answer to this question. -- AS Artimour 17:24, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Written Japanese uses multiple scripts, simultaneously, to compose sentences. The absolute most important ones are 1) kanji, 2) hiragana, 3) katakana, and to a much lesser degree 4) Latin. Bendono 05:44, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Written Japanese uses a complete mishmash of characters from the Kana and Kanji scripts. Romaji isn't often used except to explain the language to foreigners. You can't get by only learning one script. There are too many loanwords not to learn katakana, too many native words not to learn hiragana, and kanji is used everywhere except very simple written Japanese. Dracker 20:03, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Scientific names

This is addressed to whoever put "scientific" names of plants and animals.

In Japan, as in everywhere else in the world, scientific names of plants and animals are written in Latin, of course, so not in katakana, in romaji.

In Japan, the rule is that plant and animal species names are written in katakana. Perhaps it is because the kanji versions are so unreadable, I do not know the exact reason for this rule. Obviously "dog" and "cat" are written in kanji or kana, but generally speaking you will find that katakana is actually used for the names of most living things.

This information is correctly recorded in the Wikipedia "katakana" page, which seems to be a largely error free effort. The "Japanese Writing" page, on the other hand...

Scripts - romaji

I have just added a few extra words about romaji. Nothing dramatic. Jimbreen 04:02, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

References

I have added some books and papers which I have found invaluable for this topic. I intend to edit the page a bit and will cite as much as I can back to these references. Jimbreen 05:36, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Written Language Reforms

I have just replaced the old "Written language reforms and Western influence" section with a complete rewrite. Much of it has been drawn from the references I added a couple of days ago. I'll be delighted to debate (and improve) its contents. JimBreen 06:24, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Scripts section

I'm removing lots of details from here. The rationale is

1. Most of the details already exist on the individual pages for each script, e.g. there is a very detailed description of various usages of katakana on the katakana page. The stuff here which didn't exist I am moving, e.g. to the romaji page.
2. Having lots and lots of qualifications on the usages makes it hard for people coming to the article who aren't experts to read. A lot of the current contents are just distracting for a newcomer I think.

I suggest that details e.g. of usage of katakana or hiragana can go on the katakana or hiragana and the scripts section of this page can be left as a reasonably accessible introduction for people who don't need to know every little detail but just want a quick basic introduction to Japanese scripts. I put the coloured examples right at the top since they are probably the most useful part of the section for a newcomer. It seems to me that this is a general article and it should be intended for people who don't know Japanese writing, not for people who are already experts. --DannyWilde 06:25, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

While I agree with you in principle, I think you may have simplified it a bit too much -- the statement "Some Japanese words are written with different kanji depending on the meaning of the word" doesn't really make much sense, and it would be better just not to mention it at all. I'm going to try to put a little more information on that back in without making it too complicated.

Gojuon

Gojuon article/section is missing. mikka (t) 21:17, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I've added a paragraph in "scripts" about word ordering. --DannyWilde 00:16, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Japanese typewriters

Having seen a Japanese film in which someone was typing, I wondered how Japanese typewriters were designed and what writing system they used. I cannot find a Wikipedia article about it, so I wondered if someone could point me in the right direction (or add a paragraph to this article, if that is deemed appropriate)?

they produced regular Japanese (kanji & kana). They had trays of characters and one used a complicated picking system to select and print each character. I saw one being used about 1981. You only find them in museums now. JimBreen 01:32, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Also sorry for not signing my question above. Rachel Pearce 11:20, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

External Links

I have removed the link to the "Romanji-kana converter" (sic). It's not really appropriate to this page, and there are better sites available. JimBreen 01:32, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Rōmaji is the name of writing system also

From Iwanami Kokugo Jiten Fifth edition 『岩波国語辞典 第五版』 (c) 1994

ローマじ【ローマ字】 (1) 古代ローマでラテン語を書き表すために用いられ、現在世界で広く行われている、表音文字。＿「ローマ」は「羅馬」とも書く。イタリアRoma(2) 「ローマ字綴(つづ)り」の略。ローマ字<1>を用いた日本語の表記法。訓令式・ヘボン式など、いくつかの方式がある。

It says Rōmaji is the name of Alpahabet and name of writing system.--RedDragon 10:11, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Good point. It does also say that as the name of a writing system it is only an abbreviation of the proper term. Some other dictionaries don't even give sense 2, e.g. 大辞林 only says it's the name of the alphabet.

You are right, though, it would be useful to clarify this point. I have edited Romanization of Japanese again - see the new second paragraph. Does that look accurate to you? (If so, similar wording could be added in other places where the term is discussed.) — Haeleth Talk 16:06, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Langmaker link broken

Unfortunately the link for the examples of pre-Kanji characters is broken and currently displays:

Alp jindaimoji.htm From Langmaker

(There is currently no text in this page) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.34.254.214 (talk) 00:27, 26 April 2007 (UTC).

chavo 00:28, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

"Tokyo" Example

For the example contrasting the writing scripts, the katakana for Tokyo is written as トウキョウ.

Shouldn't it be written as トーキョー? Dracker 20:07, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes. --Gronky (talk) 18:17, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Officially, NO. At Tokyo Station, for example, Tokyo is とうきょう. とうきょう and トウキョウ are correct. トーキョー is informal and indicates pronunciation. Shinkansen Fan (talk) 16:27, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Japanese character be merged?

Does anyone think that the article Japanese character should be merged into this page? Batboy —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.126.219.159 (talk) 03:37, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Recommended books for learning Japanese?

Does anyone here have any book recommendations for learning written Japanese. Thanks. --RisingSunWiki 02:19, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Kanji policy in modern community projects?

I think it would be great if the article included some comments on how modern community projects set policy. Examples to draw on include Japanese Wikipedia and the translation projects of GNOME, KDE, and OpenOffice.org. Do they stick to the joyo list? Do they let everyone use whatever kanji they wish? Is is a mess? Is it a hot topic of debate? Do they define their own list? Do they use the joyo list with their own specified changes? Just a suggestion for what I think would be an interesting paragraph in the article. --Gronky (talk) 18:17, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

” and °

I didn't quite understand the article. What does the " and ° do to a (katakuna) japanese letter? Androo123 (talk) 00:54, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

red and green

The following sentence is unintelligible for certain kind of people: "(kanji (red), hiragana (blue), katakana (green), and Latin Alphabet and Arabic numerals (black):." I would change it myself, however, I am one of those. Mr.K. (talk) 09:53, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Style or amount of Kanji per passage, sentence, etc

I discussed with Japanese people the issue using Kana for words, which have the Kanji spelling in a normal modern Japanese text and received a comment that for better readability Japanese use less Kanji, I noticed this is especially the case when Kanji from different are put together and there could be confusion whether is one word or more. can anyone comment on this? Anatoli (talk) 21:47, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Parent systems

Hello,

the articles with this "Parent system" - Tree suffer from inconsistency.

Sadly some people seem to think that "Chinese character" should be the root of the tree or in the tree. This is not right since the article "Chinese character" describes the development itself (so it displays the whole tree in words). Most articles in the tree itself are right. Seal Script,Clerical Script,Regular script,Man'yōgana (even more entry's) all have the root Oracle Bone Script (all not edited by me!). But some people don't seem to understand that. So I hope you watch over the articles connected to this one at least for consistency. Hopefull you will understand that Chinese character is displaying the tree itself in words and does not display a script by itself. I added Regular script (Kanji) a while ago winch is also inconsistent. But as Kanji (at that time!) was the regular script without a change and since people before me had edited "Kanji" away I thought to prevent more edits into about this issue I added it behind Regular script. Please let me point out again that Chinese character is not a period of development and not the root. The root of Arabic_alphabet is Proto-Canaanite (a specific state of the writing system) as well and not an article describing the development (displayed in the tree).

I will put all trees now into a state that the tree elements itself have (Seal Script,Clerical Script,Regular script,Man'yōgana) as from my point of view they are perfectly right.

If or if not Kanji and Man'yōgana is part of the tree i leave open to you. The problem with these two it is that they are it is not considert independent scripts at that time (new Jap. selfmade Kanji came later as for example say Kana - therefor Kana hat nothing todo with "Japanese" selfmade Kanji - hard to explain). They are It is only a subset but wihout any changes and therefor not a script on its own. If you want them it in - I can understand it but make it consistent (and talk here ...). But Chinese character (read the article and you will see that it talks about all those elements of the tree and is a representation of the whole tree itself.) should not be part or root. Better are the Man'yōgana article named scripts!

Regards!

PS: In this article here even Man'yōgana should be taken out since it allready is the japanese writig system. It is the Parent of Kana systems but the child of Kanji - which makes it exactly what Kanji and Kana are, Japanese writing systems. :)79.192.231.198 (talk) 12:55, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Man'yōgana is the parent to the Japanese writing system because it isn't necessarily Japanese. Man'yogana is writing in pseudo-Chinese (that is, using Kanji/Hanzi to represent the Japanese language), which then later evolved (through Hentaigana and such) into Hiragana, Katakana, and Modern Japanese. moocowsrule^{talk to moo} 19:39, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry but this does not explain your change to Katakana as Man'yogana was present there. Please dont edit so hastyly people !

Please read the following carefully.

Also what I said was : "In this article here even Man'yōgana should be taken out since it allready is the japanese writig system.

It is the Parent of Kana systems but the child of Kanji - which makes it exactly what Kanji and Kana are, Japanese writing systems."

Look at it from a logical point of view if you say "Oracle Bone Script LEAD_TO Seal Script LEAD_TO Clerical Script LEAD_TO Regular script (LEAD_TO OR IS KANJI) LEAD_TO Man'yogana LEAD_TO Japanese" but Japanese consists of {Kanji, Kana} than what you say is "Oracle Bone Script LEAD_TO Seal Script LEAD_TO Clerical Script LEAD_TO Regular script (LEAD_TO OR IS KANJI) LEAD_TO Man'yogana LEAD_TO {Kanji, Kana }".

Now I know what you want to say is Man'yogana LEAD_TO Kana but this IS DONE in the Kana article ! However in this article saying the above does not make sens. The easyest way to see this is that the implication "Man'yogana LEAD_TO {Kanji," is wrong.

I really can't make it more clear to you ... :(

PS: I edited my text above as you where right - since the meaning behind Man'yōgana was lost it is an independent script. Never the less in this article as I said it does not make sense to put it in the tree :)

79.192.231.198 (talk) 21:37, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I removed the tree altogether, because it is not a single system that can be unambiguously summarized in a single lineage. Better to refer people to the kanji and kana articles. kwami (talk) 19:27, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Chinese/Japanese?

Could it be made more clear how, exactly, the Japanese ended up using Chinese characters as part of their language? I notice they tend to use them a lot in quite a few situations, and although pronounced differently, they carry the same meanings. All the Kanji article says is that they were inspired by the emperor and government, and then incorporated those characters but changed the pronounciations? Unless no one knows more about this... Please try and add more information. Thanks in advance. ★Dasani★ 02:18, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

The Japanese had no writing system. So they took over the Chinese one. However they had a spoken language, so they associated these words to the Kanji as well. What they did was even more interesting , they kept the Chinese pronunciations and since Chinese pronunciations changed over the years they added newer pronunciations as well. Thats why Kanji have so many different readings. (the readings are approximations of Chinese in dif. time periods cause jap. have very view vocals.)

Some Kanji mean the same others do not. The ratio I can't tell (but same are much more). The changes developed because both people associate different things to the original meaning over the years (like if a bonbon is sweet Jap. could associate sweet to bonbon thus sweet becomes really bonbon but the Chinese might use something else [had no real example :(] )or in some cases the meaning was just changed because of various other reasons (they are written on wiki as well).

Kanji are a major part of jap. and as more advanced the text is the more kanji you will have. In a normal text (no Manga or so) foreign words are written in Kana and words that have no common Kanji are written in Hiragana. Hiragana is also used to conjugate in japanese.

As far as I know all those things are written here somewhere (Most of what I said in Kanji (read careful ^^). You could also read Japanese language development articles as well. Anyway hope I could help but I do not see what needs to be added.

Correct me if I am wrong ^^Moooitic (talk) 02:50, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Generally, though, Chinese are able to read a good amount of the Kanji (albeit different pronunciations), I was just having a conversation with a good online friend (for years now, so don't call me out on it) here. I changed our usernames for privacy.

As illustrated in a conversation with my friend here (sorry if it's a bit too personal for Wikipedia and belongs more on LiveJournal or email, but it is a language page):

DASAN1 (9:42:08 PM): this is Chinese: 一千個黑我在家...

DASAN1 (9:42:08 PM): this is Japanese:

DASAN1 (9:42:08 PM): (OKAY, i DON'T know their language so i'm gonna put an 'X' to denote a Jap character, those curly things)

l0ver**** (9:43:01 PM): の

DASAN1 (9:42:08 PM): 一千X黑XX家X...

DASAN1 (9:42:08 PM): like that, you can only see some of it. it's like, the first one in Chinese is... well, too lazy for Pinyin right now, so i'll just give you the full translation: "A thousand dark nights, I am at home."

DASAN1 (9:42:08 PM): the Jap one is like "A thousand" and then you can only see "dark" and "home". so you have to kinda guess... like obviously, it's something bad. the definitions are the same, but the pronunciation is different.

DASAN1 (9:42:10 PM): and then it's funny too, i can see the subs when they sing. like, for example, Heartsdales... they're like "You make me feel so good! Now don't..." and then they say something in Jap, but i see the subs and it's like, literally, the Chinese characters for "mean" and "heart". so i can figure, hey, it's like, she means, don't betray her.

l0ver**** (9:43:01 PM): yeah i think i understand

Ask any Chinese speaker that is on at least a level three out of five and can read and write (sorry to most ABCs, though)!

However, some words are modified. They use things opposite. For example, in Chinese, fireworks is 烟花, while Japanese uses 花火 (and it's not a simplified format, either). Rape in Chinese is 强奸, while Japanese leans on 強姦. It's funny and I can't think of a comparable example in European languages, because I can't speak or understand them, but I can't explain it any better than that. We still understand it, though.

But yeah, cool. I never knew that was why they have so many pronunciations. Sometimes I use Wiktionary as a reference for Chinese characters I am not able to read, and I saw a ton of Japanese characters with like, five or even six different pronunciations there. ★Dasani★ 01:27, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Different nuances expressed by Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji and Romaji

I think we can take a look at the Japanese article and expand on this topic. Hiragana tends to be soft and informal. Kanji is the most formal and very common in public documents. I think this section should also mention that Katakana can be more mechanical than human. I've read robots' conversations that are written in Katakana. Shinkansen Fan (talk) 14:55, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

The Japanese article explains different nuances of watashi ("I") written in Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana, and Romaji.

他の言語では説明を追加したり単語自体を変更したりしなければならない情報でも、日本語の表記システムを用いれば同じ単語の表記を変えるだけで伝え ることができる場合がある。例えば英語の「 I 」、ドイツ語の「 Ich 」、ロシア語の「 Я 」に相当する「私」は男女兼用でフォーマルな文章にしばしば用いられる。ひらがなで書いた「わたし」は、優しい感じがするので、男女ともにインフォーマル な場や、親しみやすさを表現したい場合に使用される。例えば、女性が日記や友人への手紙で用いるなどは、その典型である。

カタカナの「ワタシ」はほとんど用いられず(時々一人称を強調する時や、外国人が片言で話すニュアンスを出す場合に用いられることがある)、ローマ 字の「watashi」も用いられることは稀であるが、何かの理由で強調したい場合などは、ひらがな・漢字混在文のなかで使用される。全文がカタカナや ローマ字表記の場合にも、使用される。

文体上の狙いで漢字の複合語を恣意的に読ませることもできる。例えば夏目漱石は短編『十五夜』 の中で名詞の「接続」を動詞的に活用した「接続って」を「つながって」と読ませている。これは通常ならば「繋がって」「つながって」と書くものであ る。（ただし、このような複数の漢字を、それに意味的対応する日本語のかな読みする例は、古くから存在している。「天皇」は「すめらみこと・すめろぎ」と 訓んでいたのであり、「日本」も「やまと」と訓んでいた）。

Standard templates

Is there any particular reason why text in the article is coded using, for example, {{transl|ja|man'yōgana}} ({{lang|ja|万葉仮名}}) instead of {{nihongo|man'yōgana|万葉仮名}}? The serifed font used by {{transl}} doesn't render very well on this standard-issue computer I'm using (in particular, when italicized, I find the pairs j & i and g & w impossible to distinguish without zooming in several steps, but the italics are pretty hard to read in general). —Quasirandom (talk) 20:59, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

The featured article on the German Wikipedia

This is a bit outside of my normal area of editing, but when I saw the star among the inter-language links, I got tempted to try translating the German version of this article into English. I copied the article into this page in my user space and started translating. Sadly, I find the quality of the article a bit disappointing and I probably won't continue. I'm noting this here for anyone who may want to finish the translation or to use what little I have translated to improve this article. Regards, Goodraise 19:56, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Better translation?

The translation "Radcliffe to compete in Olympic marathon, also implied to appear in the 10,000 m" is not terribly good English. I am not confident enough that I understand the nuance of the original Japanese well enough to want to change it. Perhaps someone else could have a try... 86.184.236.91 (talk) 00:52, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Inconsistency

At Katakana, it says "It is very common to write words with difficult-to-read kanji in katakana." That is not very consistent with this article, which says instead that hiragana is used for words "whose kanji is obscure, difficult to typeset, or considered too difficult to understand". Somehow this inconsistency ought to be resolved, but I do not exactly know how best to do it. 86.177.107.165 (talk) 18:45, 25 March 2012 (UTC)