Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 May 1

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May 1

Words from the song

Does anyone discern the words from this song, starting from 10:04? The song doesn't appear in The Darkest Hour soundtrack, I spent 2 days and am still unsure whether it's Russian, English or other language. Brandmeister^talk 11:21, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

FWIW I do not recognise it as English, but I guess that doesn't really move things along much... 86.179.1.81 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 03:09, 2 May 2012 (UTC).

Japanese writing systems

Why does Japanese still use three writing systems rather than, say, always using hiragana? --108.206.4.199 (talk) 23:58, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Why does English still use two writing systems (upper case and lower case) instead of just one? It's mostly tradition (AKA historical accident), but the extra expressiveness is useful as well. Probably not useful enough to be worth the added complexity (in either case), but useful nonetheless. -- BenRG (talk) 00:55, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

It just seems that kanji especially is too complicated; even native Japanese speakers often have trouble with it. Have there ever been any proposals within Japan itself to reform or eliminate kanji? --108.206.4.199 (talk) 01:08, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I believe that there have in the past been serious proposals to do away with kanji, but obviously these have been unsuccessful. Apart from the cultural, historical and general richness-of-the-language aspects, there are practical benefits to kanji too. Japanese has an outrageously large number of homophones that kanji can differentiate where kana can't. Furthermore, given that Japanese is written without spaces, kanji help to mark word boundaries, and generally make it easier to parse sentences. My Japanese is very rudimentary, but even I find that Japanese for complete beginners written wholly in hiragana is actually more difficult to read than Japanese with the proper kanji (assuming I know the kanji!). 86.179.1.81 (talk) 02:07, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Are upper and lower cases properly regarded as different writing systems, Ben? We mix them together in the same writings, which is not what is done with different systems. And they resemble each other (by and large), which different writing systems do not do at all, generally speaking. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 01:42, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, the three Japanese systems are also mixed together in the same writings, and even in the same words... 86.179.1.81 (talk) 03:37, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps cursive versus printing would be a better example ? While they still resemble each other, in English, they aren't used together as often. StuRat (talk) 18:14, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps even better would be something like "X-Mas", where the 'x' has both symbolic and phonetic content and 'mas' is just a string with only phonetic content. Matttoothman (talk) 20:42, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

If you mean "X-Mas" as in "Christmas", then "Mas" is not purely phonetic. 86.160.209.138 (talk) 21:29, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

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108.206.4.199 -- In medieval times, some women did write in hiragana only, and hiragana was sometimes known as "women's writing" (while men often tended to write in Chinese, or heavily Chinese-influenced Japanese). The book Writing Systems by Geoffrey Sampson (ISBN 0-8047-1756-7) contains an interesting discussion of both some of the complexities of Japanese writing, and why it might not be so easy to eliminate kanji from modern writing. By the way, nowadays the Latin alphabet has been effectively incorporated as a fourth sub-system of Japanese writing... AnonMoos (talk) 06:32, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Because Japanese people prefer the current writing system above all. You can read written sentences faster with kanji. There are many homonyms in ja and they cannot be distinguished without kanji. Sentences written only with hiragana make me irritating and mad. As a native speaker, I cannot find any reason to change the current writing system. Oda Mari (talk) 09:00, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

The current system has certain advantages, and is unlikely to be changed in any major way anytime soon. However, it's also true that Japanese writing is by far the most convolutedly complex of any orthography or writing system of any significant modern language in the world today... AnonMoos (talk) 10:31, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Interestingly, Takuboku Ishikawa wrote his diary in romaji so that his wife couldn't read it. That wouldn't happen today, obviously.--Shirt58 (talk) 08:39, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Kanji was introduced not a long time ago to avoid writing in lenghty katakana/hiragana. Katakana is a medival writing system first used by Buddhist monks. So I believe that the Japanese want to preserve the old style katakana and the simple, modern kanji. Also, the kanji is used to reduce space, eg in advertisements. Kanji can be useful for people who have a good memory, but are lazy to write in katakana/hiragana. Katakana is simple and is particularly useful for beginners.GoP_T^C_N 09:28, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I think you have the facts the wrong way around. If you read Kanji, you will see that Chinese characters were used in Japan from the 5th century onwards. Whereas Katakana, according to that article, was developed between the 8th and 12th centuries, and, most importantly for your purpose, was developed out of kanji (in terms of written form). --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 12:47, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

The earliest writing in Japanese was in kana: the oldest surviving inscription, the Bussokuseki no Uta, is entirely in kana, though their forms are full Chinese characters rather than the cursive or simplified glyphs that eventually developed; and Genji monogatari is entirely in hiragana. The use of kanji arose during the period when everything Chinese was in fashion, originally in order to write what the poets in question thought was Chinese (though it mostly wasn't). Roy Andrew Miller suggested that the complicated multiple systems became entrenched because to the people at the imperial court, mostly forced to be idle, complexity had a positive value rather than a negative one. This doesn't answer the question of why the Japanese still maintain the system, but it shows how it arose and why the tradition became so entrenched. --ColinFine (talk) 10:25, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I am learning to read and write Chinese, and I am coming to appreciate the efficiency of these characters (hanzi), which are essentially the same as the Japanese kanji. The complexity of the characters comes (in most cases) from the combination of an approximate phonetic component and a semantic component. Once you have learned the main semantic and phonetic components, you can make a good guess at the meaning of a new character. In Chinese and Japanese, about 3,000-4,000 of these characters are regularly used by educated readers and writers. In this context, the additional 100 or so combined total hiragana and katakana characters are a trivial addition and very useful for rendering foreign words and the grammatical prefixes and endings that exist in Japanese but not Chinese. There is no question that some Western writing systems, especially for very phonetic written languages such as Finnish, are less complex, but at the cost of the efficiency and semantic richness offered by hanzi/kanji. On the other hand, I'm not so sure that the English writing system, with thousands of etymological and nonphonetic spellings that must be memorized, is dramatically simpler than the Chinese or Japanese writing systems. Marco polo (talk) 14:24, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Japanese standard is closer to 2200, as that is a list done by the government for purposes of education. Even native speakers, therefore, can have trouble with the specialized language in certain industries and for medical terms. As an example, 児童脳性麻痺 is "childhood brain paralysis" (meaning cerebral palsy, actually), but the average Japanese person would have no idea what that was if you told them the word, just like with many native English speakers. The Chinese character set is a lot bigger. MSJapan (talk) 05:27, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

MSJapan, I disagree with you. 児童脳性麻痺 consists of basic words and it's easily understandable. But the word should be just 脳性麻痺 or 脳性小児麻痺, not 児童脳性麻痺. There's no such word in ja. Oda Mari (talk) 07:22, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

That is correct. Having only had the word as a novelty in the first place, I must not have remembered it properly. MSJapan (talk) 17:57, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

One interesting difference between logographic vs. alphabetic writing: -- if you only do a little reading every now and then in your native language, and your native language is written alphabetically, then you don't generally forget letters of the alphabet. But those Chinese or Japanese who only do a little reading every now and then definitely do forget characters/kanji... AnonMoos (talk) 16:43, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

If Japanese language has so many homophones that it's more difficult to read text written entirely in kana, then does this also make it difficult to understand spoken Japanese? – b_jonas 13:02, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

It can be tough, but it is generally clear from context, because Japanese is very context-specific. As a matter of fact, the reason personal pronouns are not often used is partially because the context makes it clear what's going on.

I'm going to romanize on purpose to illustrate an example: "yougo" can be 用語 or 養護 or a few other things; see Jim Breen's WWWJDIC for a list of examples. Now, whether it is "nursing", "Western language", "a term", or something else is dependent on how one uses "yougo". ようごをはなす　("yougo wo hanasu") as "I speak a term" or "I speak nursing" doesn't make sense in English, nor does it in Japanese. Therefore, one would figure out from context that the right word would be "Western language." The example is weird, though, because you would normally see something like ようごとはえいご、スペインご、フランスごです or "yougo to wa, eigo, supeingo, furansugo desu", whereby the structure of the sentence solves a lot of the ambiguity by its very nature. MSJapan (talk) 05:27, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Because of the pitch accent and the context, most of the time it's not difficult at all. Occasionally you have to ask "Do you mean xx as yy?", but it's really rare. MSJapan, I don't think native speakers say or write "ようごとはえいご、スペインご、フランスごです". I'm afraid you do not understand the meaning and usage of 用語 well. Oda Mari (talk) 06:51, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Oops! Sorry, you mean 洋語. I don't know why, but the word is rarely used. I don't think I've ever used the word. I don't remember other native speakers have used it either. Oda Mari (talk) 10:06, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Ignoring the fact that 洋語 is rare, what is the purpose of と in 洋語とはえいご、スペインご、フランスごです? Is と actually the right particle? 86.180.160.96 (talk) 13:28, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

It is the right particle. See [1], [2], [3], and [4]. People often use the phrase "xxとは？"/"what is xx?" when they use G search/Bing and "xxとは" is usually the first suggestion when you type a noun xx in ja. Try ja G.S. or ja Bing. Oda Mari (talk) 16:38, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

To me, 洋語とはえいご、スペインご、フランスごです looks as if it means that 洋語 is defined as those three languages, or comprises just those three languages, which wouldn't be right (because obviously there are dozens of such languages). Am I wrong to interpret it that way? I was looking for a particle that meant something like "among", perhaps 洋語には... or 洋語では..., but I'm not sure if either of those would be correct Japanese. 86.180.160.96 (talk) 17:23, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

(outdent) Again, it's contextual. X には can come across as "As for X", but is an topical agent marker, and for では to work, it would probably be have to be の中では, but it can sound odd because で is often a point of action marker, so I'm not sure what would come after that in that case. I'm leaning towards "洋語として,..." but I can't explain why, and the phrasing of what would have to come afterwards would seem to need to be a little different, like "洋語の例として、英語、スペイン語、フランス語もあります。", which is not a definition. Nevertheless, とは is the standard form for asking for a definition ("X とはなんですか。" really), and considering it "exhaustive" is a misread of the と. XとYとZ is an exhaustive list, because that's what と does there (the alternative is や, which implies there might be other things not enumerated), but that's specifically dealing with lists. Something like とは is really a totally different construction. I'd say your main problem is looking for a direct correspondence between the languages - English has a lot of stuff that works the same in all instances, and Japanese depends heavily on the context. MSJapan (talk) 17:57, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I understand the difference between と meaning "and" in XとYとZ, and と as a "quoting particle" (if that's the right term) in 洋語とは; however, my mistake seems to be in thinking 洋語とは～です should express a (complete) definition, rather than perhaps just some examples. 86.180.160.96 (talk) 23:34, 5 May 2012 (UTC) BTW, IMO there is easily as much context-dependent variation in the meaning of "small common grammatical words" in English as there is in Japanese (just consider English prepositions), so I don't really subscribe to your final point.