Aso Taro also having problems with illogical Japanese script

[Anonymous No.]

Aso has been ridiculed the past months for his mispronunciation of common words. Problem is, he's not the only one, since the Japanese has an idiotic written language many people mispronounce stuff all the time, which is why tons of books on reading skills and pronunciation help are being published in Japan, read more in the article below.

>Literacy-boosting books are selling briskly. One titled, "Chinese Characters that Look Readable but are Easily Misread," released a year ago, has sold more than 800,000 copies — most of them since Aso's mistakes first got national attention in November, said Yukiko Sakita, a spokeswoman for Futami Shobo Publishing Co.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090304/ap_on_re_as/as_japan_reading_japanese

[Anonymous No.]

>According to a 2007 government survey, one-fifth of Japanese 16 or older often encounter Chinese characters they cannot read, while one-third have trouble writing them without looking them up. Nearly half said they still need to master the 2,000 characters considered necessary for daily life.

[Anonymous No.]

That's why they should start using the roman alphabet.

Fucking waps.

[Anonymous No.]

The rest of the world stopped using pictograms a few thousand years ago, Japan.

[Anonymous No.]

Mispronounciation or misreading?

Pronounciation is what's hard, with all the undocumented differences.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189493
the japanese language would become completely unreadable that way. Heck, people freaking draw kanji in their hand while speaking because it might be difficult to understand what you mean because of the huge amount of homonyms.

Not like some poorly educated american who never learned a foreign language would know, though.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189510
How about adapting english or german and forget about their silly language instead?

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189510
yeah I see them draw kanji all the time in political debates because they can't understand which word the debater is saying.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189483
Wasn't this posted yesterday

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189510
>Not like some poorly educated american who never learned a foreign language would know
Oh and I'm German and know three languages,
if this was supposed to be an insult against me.

[Anonymous No.]

Personally I blame China and its primitive language.

Also, is Aso Taro the Japanese equivalent to Bush?

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189501

Not really. The Roman alphabet was forced on a lot of people, who either didn't write or wrote with a more "primitive" system. About 1.5 billion (rough guess) still use pictogram like characters anyway.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189515
I think they should adapt hangul or something similar. At least it works fine without using 50000 different drawings.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189515

English is pretty fucking silly itself.
There are so many exceptions to rules that you may as well have no rules.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189535

>50000

Make that 2-3 thousand. Please at least try to sound informed.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189536
yes, it's silly but not as silly as Japanese.

they didn't have to invent/steal a few new characters just to distinguish between the word "plain" and "plane."

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189538
2-3000 is hardly enough for academics.

[Anonymous No.]

Don't blame the Japanese language for Aso Taro's dyslexia.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189538
I think it was supposed to be sarcasm on his
side, while it's true that the Japanese use a
shitload of different drawings with no purpose
whatsoever.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189510
>the japanese language would become completely unreadable that way
Start using kana or romaji with spaces, problem solved.

Or are you saying that due to the huge amount of homonyms, people can't understand what they say when they're talking? You can't use kanji when you're talking.

[Anonymous No.]

Ore wa nihongo.

[Anonymous No.]

This thread is full of retarded uniformed people making stupid noises.

[Anonymous No.]

A large portion of kanji is redundant, anyway.

歌う　唄う　謡う　詠う　詩う

(Yes, I know there is a purpose for having five different kanji make the exact same word but it's still insane.)

[Anonymous No.]

Screw all languages.
Everyone should speak Esperanto.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189576
You make a compelling argument.

That Esperanto isn't a language.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189576

2/10

Must try harder.

[Anonymous No.]

everyone should speak braille

[Anonymous No.]

>Aso has been ridiculed the past months for his mispronunciation of common words.

Sounds like Japanese George Bush.

[Anonymous No.]

speaking's overrated; let's all communicate using semaphore.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189574
Really, give me a good reason why they can't use romaji? The "too many homonyms" reason is bullshit. Are you honestly trying to say people can't understand each other when they talk?

If the issue is the pauses in speech people make when talking -> use spaces
If the issue is the pronunciation of things -> use accents

People who claim the Japanese language is too ambiguous for roman letters obviously haven't put much thought into how other languages do disambiguation.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189527
9/10 people in Japan disapprove of Aso.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189598
Lots of jokes dont' work with romaji. You'd understand if you've ever read the szs manga in it's raw form.

[Anonymous No.]

In the future we will communicate telepathically. And the language will be in x86.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189598
Lots of literary works use certain kanji's to have double meanings.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189610
That would be terrible.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189606
A language where jokes only work in written form is pretty weak.

No wonder Japanese stand up comedy is so lame.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189616
I pop'd you're stack.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189606
So what? New jokes will arise with the new script you faggot.

And SZS is horrible.

[Anonymous No.]

Why is there little pressure within japan for kanji reform?

Waiy iz thar litul preshur in Ingland or Uhmarikuh for fonetik speling riiform?

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189598

Actually, not understanding each other when speaking aloud is known to happen in Japan. Absurd, isn't it? Their language is pretty much a failure, too many characters with too many meanings to be functional in written form, too many homonyms to understand each other verbally, too many crippling social phobias and pressures to speak their minds anyhow...

[Anonymous No.]

ELEVENSじゃないよ！
日本人だよ！
日本は毛唐人のじゃない。　尊皇攘夷！

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189632
That's not phonetic, and nobody said English was perfect. It's less horrible than Japanese in every single way.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189620
mov eax, YOU
xor eax, eax
mov YOU, eax

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189641
let me guess how much you know about japanese - three words learned by watching fansubbed animu?

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189493
>>2189501
>>2189527
>>2189535
>>2189547
>>2189575
>>2189598

I literally scrolled through this thread and clicked on butthurt. Butthurt that your tiny brains can't learn your precious favorite language?

cry about it nerds

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189610
Raw binary or can we use ASM?

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189665
>butthurt
ED, back to it, etc.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189618
Or....just different? Japanese can do spoken jokes too, you know. I just gave you a reason switching might be a detriment.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189601
>9/10 people in Japan disapprove of Aso.

Same as 9/10 people in earth disapprove of Bush

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189680

Hey man, it's okay don't cry. Pick up a textbook and stop being a lazy fatface!

[Anonymous No.]

/jp/ - 日本語学生の不平の掲示板

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189659
I know 70++ kanji, and a few hundred words.

[Anonymous No.]

Complaining doesn't change anything, if you want to learn Japanese, you got to learn it how they use it. If you don't want to learn it, why are you complaining? If you do, then just fucking learn it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189687
so you admit you don't even know 1/10 of what you're criticizing?

[Anonymous No.]

As someone who knows enough Japanese to at least read raw manga, I'd have to agree that it's horribly inefficient. I like the language, but that doesn't mean it's good at its job. Most languages have some shortfalls, but the problems with Japanese tend to be a bit more glaring.

[Anonymous No.]

The Japanese written language is pretty shitty in comparison to others. Chinese has one reading for every character and Korean has an alphabet.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189698

This. Stop crying babies. Learn it, or don't regret that you're being a fat lazy faggot.

Or don't learn it and regret it but do nothing about it because you're a fat lazy faggot.

[Anonymous No.]

What happened to the elitists that say Japanese is simple? Is a few thousand Kanji too hard for you?

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189685

>日本語学生の不平の掲示板

Board for complaints of Japanese language students?

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189717
You have to admit the spoken language is fairly simple compared to a lot of other languages. That's probably what anyone calling it simple is referring to.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189696
行 has 4 in Chinese.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189726
For being "fairly simple" I see way too many people stumbling over simple conjugations whenever I meet even some of the "Expats". Very rarely do I see people that actually sound smooth, even just grammatically (in tokyo).

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189687
ah. pretty much nothing, like I thought. come back comaparing it to english once you've been fluent for a few years.

[Anonymous No.]

lol @ the butthurt fags getting so defensive over such a shity language.

Sorry, no matter how much you worship Japan it won’t change anything. It’s a shit language.

Japanese and English need to take a lesson from non-retarded languages line French and German and wise the fuck up.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189751
It's objectively simple because it has few tenses (or moods, if you will), no declensions, words don't have a sex, and it's not tonal. Of course it still has some components that can be "tricky". Every language does.

[Anonymous No.]

If the government in Japan wasn:t run by old geezers, maybe they could modernize their language a bit more.

But that:ll never happen.

[Anonymous No.]

Japanese grammar is simple. It might seem hard at first, but that's only because it's very *different* from what you're used to as a native English speaker. Once you've got the basic building blocks, it starts to come together quite easily. It's also easy to build (spoken) vocabulary in comparison to other languages since irregular words are so rare.

Learning kanji isn't *difficult* either, it just takes a lot of grunt work. Plain old rote memorization - time committed and total repetitions is all that really matters.

Basically Japanese isn't "hard" unless you're either an idiot or you're old and only speak one language and now your brain is too inflexible to start acquiring foreign languages. You just need to be prepared to spend a lot of *time* on it.

(PROTIP: Despite what I said above, if anime/manga is the ONLY reason you're learning Japanese, then at some point you're just going to throw up your hands and give up. I've had class with people who were in it entirely so they could watch anime "raw," and that is what inevitably happened to them. You know why? Because learning another language at all is a pretty big thing, whether it's Japanese, Spanish, or Swahili.

Branch out your fucking interests! Since this is /jp/ you're supposed to be some kind of ur-weeaboo rather than the typical wapanese idiot anyway!

The more you learn the more opportunity you will have for this but you should be constantly exploring new things right from the beginning!)

[Anonymous No.]

Why not write most things in kana, and use kanji where there would be ambiguity?

This is basically the case in Korean, they write mostly in Hangul but use Chinese characters occasionally).

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189883
>Despite what I said above, if anime/manga is the ONLY reason you're learning Japanese, then at some point you're just going to throw up your hands and give up.
Only if you're weak minded. It's the only language other than English that I know as well, I don't think the "flexibility" argument makes much difference, it might help a little though

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189891
the different writing systems help identifying the role of words - verb, noun, particle etc. It's way more pleasant to read a text that writes most words in kanji without overdoing it than one that's mostly kana. Old game systems used few kanji and it's really annoying to read. All-kana writing (like Final Fantasy I-III had) is really horrible to read.

[Anonymous No.]

Japan's own George W. Bush

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189883

No-one is saying that's it's a hard language, though. It isn't. What it is is an inefficient language. How many Western languages are there where it takes a full trip through the schooling system, complete with regular testing throughout, to even be considered literate?

[Anonymous No.]

Sure, Aso's mistakes may have brought some of the difficulties of the language into the limelight, but think about this: People are only talking about this because they took real notice that he was screwing up. If public figures all had difficulty reading, that wouldn't have happened.

Not only that but if you look at what the actual screwups are (there is a list on Taro Aso's entry in the Japanese Wikipedia, I think), many of them seem more like mixing up similar sounding words than misreading similar looking kanji!

Perhaps Aso has undiagnosed dyslexia or something?

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189908
Are you telling me that the average highschool graduate is literate? Half of them can't even get "there", "their", and "they're" right half the time.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189899
Supposedly people would read the lines aloud to be able to understand them easier.

[Anonymous No.]

I have to admit it was funny when somebody tried to interrupt a speech he was giving to quiz him on kanji.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189919
That's just because they're lazy and not because writing English is hard.

[Anonymous No.]

Speaking and understanding japanese is one thing, hell even reading(hiragana) is easy once you know all the gramatical rules (which are generally more straight forward than english grammar rules).

The problem is the kanji, which while do help reading (for the more common and simple characters) generally trip most people up with the harder stuff.

The hard part is the

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189488
This says more about the quality of the Japanese school system than the Japanese language.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189952
same reason why a lot of japanese have insufficient knowledge of kanji.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189727
It's a rare case, xing and hang are the most common readings anyway.

[Anonymous No.]

I don't think I'll ever be able to learn Japanese due to brain damage from alcohol and drugs.

[Anonymous No.]

>>An anatomy professor from the University of Tokyo, Dr. Takeshi Yoro, pointed out that this suggests Aso might be dyslexic.

but yeah, one person misreading stuff totally proves that the japanese language has to be shit. good reasoning.

[Anonymous No.]

I'm not really going to complain, but I don't see why they don't just write in hiragana/katakana...

[Anonymous No.]

Japan should adopt hangul.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189982
please consider reading the last few replies.

>>2189987
that doesn't even make sense. Hangul has sounds japanese doesn't use, and can't be used to write all the sounds japanese DOES use.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2189883
>you're old and only speak one language and now your brain is too inflexible to start acquiring foreign languages.
This has been proven to be bullshit.

>if anime/manga is the ONLY reason you're learning Japanese, then at some point you're just going to throw up your hands and give up.
I don't think that's true. Right now I'm learning Spanish for no reason other than my college's second language requirement and I haven't given up yet, or even considered doing so. Even anime is a lot more motivation than that. It all depends on how lazy a person is, not what their motivation for learning a language is.

[Anonymous No.]

>PROTIP: Despite what I said above, if anime/manga is the ONLY reason you're learning Japanese, then at some point you're just going to throw up your hands and give up.

Anime/manga, maybe (isn't that /a/-material), but I learned Japanese for eroges, and I learned Japanese through eroges, and I haven't given up.

I started four years ago and can read pretty much everything now. Learning a language is not hard. Just time consuming.

[Anonymous No.]

I think it’s the height of arrogance to claim someone can’t learn a new language because of their age, especially when refering to a rather low age. Forty and fifty year olds can be respected professors and scientists, but a little portion of the brain devoted to learning languages randomly suicides half-way through their twenties?

You believe this because it fuels your superiority complex, or because you read xkcd. In both cases, you lose.

[Anonymous No.]

Japan should reduce the mandatory kanji amount and use hiragana for hard kanji instead.

China had to simplify their characters for a reason.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2190122
As a linguistics major, I can tell you that the language acquisition device in the human brain IS far more active under the age of 12. The human brain more or less puts all the effort into learning language into the time when the brain is growing rapidly.

Of course, at high school age and up, the ability to learn language is mostly the same regardless of age as long as you actually use your brain everyday. So while the idea that language acquisition has to be done early in life is true to an extent, it hardly means an old person cannot learn a new language.

The problem is, people spend a good 15 years mastering their native tongue, then for some reason get frustrated when it takes more than a year to learn an entirely new language.

[Anonymous No.]

Korea completely removed kanjis and used their script only.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2190151
Is there an average amount of languages a person can comfortably learn while growing up as a child? I only grew up speaking two but I know a few people that grew up with 3 but it seems anything over 2 isn't doesn't really get any harder/confusing.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2190163
They still use kanji for disambiguation and signs.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2190172
A person can only learn under 9000 languages at a time.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2190172
There really isn't an upper limit as far as the brain itself is concerned; it's mostly a matter of practicality. I know someone who knew 7 languages by the time they graduated high school. If you spend your free time just learning languages there's no reason you couldn't learn them well into the double digits.

The real barrier is that outside of the period when your brain is actively seeking language, you'll inevitably forget what you don't use. The more languages you learn, the more time you'll have to put into using them to maintain them.

As for an average limit to the number you can learn when you're still very young though, I'd say there isn't one.

[English Muffin !A4oRvQHaNo!!5EMM6+hRLxG No.]

>>2190172
There are still some questions surrounding monolingual children. You may be surprised to know that a "perfect" bilingual child (i.e. one that is just as good at either language - a rare state of affairs indeed) will actually know fewer words than a monolingual child in either language, but more overall. Up until the 70s all research on multilingual children was to determine the extent to which multilingualism damaged and/or slowed child's linguistic (and social) development - and it was linked highly with the rise of IQ testing and the baselines set, as the US tested all immigrants in the early 20th century and declared that multilingualism was the reason that people from underpriviliged backgrounds in Europe had much lower IQs than other "white" people. These days of course we know that IQ is a social construct and does not stay fixed. We also know that multilingualism in children is, more often than not, a benefit.

To answer your question directly, there has been no limit established, and CLA theorists just assume that a child has the capacity for infinite languages. The LAD (language acquisition device - the part of the brain that learns language "from scratch") is said to only be active before puberty (the end of the "critical period"), and when it deactivates language parameters are set - for example a monolinguistic Japanese child will have the verb-final parameter set. What this means is that a Japanese monolingual will have a hard time comprehending language systems that are not verb-final. This is not to say they will never understand, it is just more difficult and requires a conscious effort. Beyond the critical period it is also said to be impossible for someone to acquire an entire language, as well as all its phonetic and phonotactic elements (i.e. a perfect accent)

Just one more reason to fucking hate puberty.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2190222

I hate puberty because I think pubic hair on girls is gross.

[English Muffin !A4oRvQHaNo!!5EMM6+hRLxG No.]

>>2190228
Me too my friend.
I also hate breasts any bigger than buds.

Puberty is evil and must be stopped.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2190228
I hate puberty because thanks to that shit my whole childhood was ruined.

[Anonymous No.]

Puberty kills millions of little girls every year.

And yet nobody seems to be doing anything about it.