Google Takes Aim at Japanese with New IME

He also forgot lolicon, zettai ryouiki and azunyan.

wow learned something about Japanese language at sahaku

At Anon 05:09 04/12/2009
No the whole world doesn't use the roman system. What about the Cyrillic system? Russian and Serbian etc.

No matter what you may think of it, kanji is here to stay and it's a must for any Japanese learner.
@5:09
Modern Korean uses phonetic alphabet. The same goes for Vietnamese too.
Only Japan and China still use semanto-phonetic writing system today.

In addition, Katakana are necessary as well, because they tell you at -one- glance "This is a loan-word, interpret it as such."

This is important for much of the same reasons outlined for the kanji.

After being 'run through' the phonetic alphabet, many loan words 'sound' similar to native words, at least in written form. When spoken, you'd likely pick it up from the tone, but when written, you do not have that aid.

I'm not a native English speaker, so I'm kinda clutching at viable comparisons here, but it'd kinda like 'coup de grace' (D&D players especially are familiar with this one. :p) ended up being written identically to 'cup of grass', or 'sauerkraut' would be written identically to 'sour crowd'.

Imagine that going for a -lot- of weird words. You'd have a "What the shit is this guy talking abo- ... OH!" moment every few sentences.

The argument that without kanji Japanese would be illegible cannot be true, because that would mean that Japanese people would not be able to talk with each other and could only communicate in writing, which is patently absurd.
>Couldn't you just add spaces?
I've got a Japanese children's book, and it uses kana and a space after every particle.
>rite & right, etc.
My own native language uses a phonemic spelling (except for foreign words, how I wish they'd fix that!) and homophones don't pose a problem at all, even though there are many. And the benefits are huge, so we really cannot understand why the anglophones don't reform.

Just use your imagination. It's not something that people without Japanese knowledge can understand. Once you get a good grasp at Japanese, you will hate anything that only have Hiragana and Katakana. It's almost on the unreadable level.

While I'm not about to call for the abolishment of kanji, I've never really gotten the "hiraganawouldlooklikethis" defence. Can't you just... add spaces?!

Can't you just... add spaces?!

That might help a little bit, sure. But it wouldn't have the same effect as adding spaces to the English sentence. Keep in mind the "hiraganawouldlooklikethis" thing is merely an approximation to help someone who doesn't know Japanese have a rough idea of what it looks/feels like to someone who does. It's not an exact analogy.

Also, see what I said about Hiragana being purely phonetic above. The characters not "letters", per se, but syllables. Each character is one specific sound. And there's only about 50-100 of them, depending on whether you count compounds, etc. Let's call it a clean 100. Imagine what the English language would be like if you only had a hundred syllables at your disposal, rather than 26 letters that can be combined into any number of syllables.

Even with spaces, there'd still be too many words that sound the same (and thus are written exactly the same in Hiragana), but have very many different meanings. By using Kanji, you can let the reader know which meaning was intended. And that makes written text much easier to make sense of.

My pleasure.

I felt much the same when I started learning Japanese. Having thousands of characters seemed crazy.

It's only later that I realized how necessary they are... and even came to outright despise text written in pure Hiragana for being so ambiguous and hard to decipher.

2 Splat

I have to thank you for extended explanation, makes me agree I wasn't right.

i couldnt agree more! even though im far from mastering kanji, i still prefer reading stuff with a good deal of kanjis on them than none..

i actually find it harder to read stuff with just kanas, kanjis make things more simplified strangely enough

@Riiku

We technically have two alphabets as well. The "ABC"s and the "abc"s.

Now, you may very well perceive them as one and the same. Most likely to the point of not even realizing there's two of them, in fact. But they are different. Especially so in handwritten form.

And even printed, how are 'A' and 'a' the same? 'D' and 'd'? 'R' and 'r'? They aren't. Not at all. If you had never learned the roman alphabet, you'd see absolutely no connection - let alone similarity - between them.

The only reason you perceive them as one and the same is because you've learned it that way from an early age. I imagine someone who has grown up with Japanese feels much the same about あ and ア, か and カ, etc being one and the same "letter".

As for Kanji, the Anon above describes the need for them quite well. One thing I'd like to add though:

Another reason they are necessary is that Hiragana and Katakana are phonetic "alphabets". They each represent all the basic sounds available in the Japanese language. And they're quite limited at that. Consequently, there are many words that sound the same but mean completely different things.

In English we also have words like that (though not as many due to a larger variety of available sounds). And, in addition to context, we can distinguish between them based on how they are written. "Night" and "Knight". "Write", "rite" and "right". Et cetera.

If Japanese had only Hiragana, a purely phonetic set of characters, this would not be possible for them. Not only that, but in written form certain nuances of intonation and pauses between words are lost as well. theresultfeelssomethinglikethisasanonpointedout.

Kanji helps with that by giving the sentences structure and providing meaning, rather than just phonetic sounds.

Stop justifying an archaic, old and retarded writing system.

It's not effective and only wastes people's time and effort. Not to mention all the machines, programs, products and similar that need to adjust to that retarded system.

Just use the goddamn roman system like the rest of the world, Japan, China and Korea.

the only way you wouldn't see a relationship between small letters and capital letters in the English alphabet is if you were an idiot

Because it's Japanese, anon. Also, ever seen Hiragana without Kanji? It'skindoflikeifItypedwithoutspaces. Nowimaginepagesuponpagesofthisshit. Yeah, not pretty...I hate Kanji too (even being Native Japanese), but I can't deny that it makes sentences easier to read overall.

Ｒｏｓｅｔｔａ Ｓｔｏｎｅ ｉｓｎ’ｔ ｔｈａｔ ｇｏｏｄ ｔｈｏｕｇｈ。You could do it but there are better alternatives like smart.fm

Are you forgetting that you're on the internet?