In Defence of Japanese Culture

[Snowflake]

Originally posted by mindseye

I'm sorry, but that sounds just plain wrong to me.

If it were just as easy, why do Chinese students require years of grinding rote-memorization to become literate?

But are't western students required years of studying to learn all these English words? I'd almost guess a fifth grader in China knows a higher percentage of Chinese words then the percentage of English words a fifth grader here knows.

[Kassiopeia]

Originally posted by mindseye


Actually, I think that's not true.

A proficient speaker of English also gets the meaning more or less directly from the appearance of the word, they don't mentally "sound it out". Most of the time, the shape of the word is recognized and processsed directly into meaning without use of phonetic cues, so I think the information density level is about the same.

Words are, in effect, pictures the same way logocraphic characters are, but they are composed of a set of smaller elements. Efficiency-wise, however, the system I'm writing this in is more efficient, in that I can express any word of the English language with just a bit over twenty different symbols (which fit on an input device like a keyboard) while with thousands of characters it's not quite as simple.

[Snowflake]

As I said, Chinese characters are equivalent to English words, not letters. Letters do not have meanings, just as the strokes in Chinese. Word on the other hand, convey meanings. There are thousands Chinese characters, just like there are thousands English words.

And being able to prounce a new word before you don't know it IS a plus for English although it may not mean much if you can pronounce it but still don't know its meaning. There are words in Chinese one can guess the meaning and pronounciation too.

[MrFun]

I see nothing wrong with a culture that emulates some strengths of other cultures.

That is essentially what history of civilizations is about, is it not? Not very many cultures are pure in of themselves.

[Snowflake]

And we all know purity leads to regression.

[MrFun]

someone who understands

[Q Classic]

explains the brits...

[Sava]

Japanese culture needs defending?

[lord of the mark]

What about traditional Japanese theater, Noh and Kabuki and all that?

Re Zen - IIUC the Japanese took the whole Koan thing far beyond what China did.

Note also - per Marc Bloch, author of Feudal Society, Japan had the only genuine feudal system outside Europe. I suspect the whole warrior code thing in Japanese culture is alien to Chinese culture. Which, combined with the Zen thing, gives a very distinctive Samurai culture. See Kabuki and other theater again. And that WAS Japanese culture prior to the opening to the West.

[molly bloom]

Japanese culture produced one of the world's first true novels.

Japanese erotic prints are very good indeed.

Japanese art greatly influenced the French Impressionists, Van Gogh, Cezanne and the Post Impressionists, in terms of painting structure and perspective.

Japan can greatly improve imported goods/manufacturing techniques, even if the number of Japanese 'inventions' is relatively small.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by mindseye
A proficient speaker of English also gets the meaning more or less directly from the appearance of the word, they don't mentally "sound it out". Most of the time, the shape of the word is recognized and processsed directly into meaning without use of phonetic cues, so I think the information density level is about the same.

That's speed reading.

You do that by taking a phonetic system and hammer it into - you guess it - a ideographic system. Thus proving the advantage of ideographic systems.

If you take a book and compare the English (or French, German, even Japanese) original and the Chinese translation, the Chinese version is always thinner. That means the Chinese representation takes up less space.

Originally posted by mindseye
On the other hand, character-based systems suffer from the serious disadvantage of being divorced from the spoken language. With character-based writing systems, you have to memorize additional unrelated data (i.e. the pronunciation) for each character.

With phonetic languages, the verbal and written languages reinforce each other, instead of being more-or-less unrelated parallel codes.

That's not that much extra information. In English, you have to remember how to spell a word, how to pronounce it, and the word's meaning(s). In Chinese, you remember how to write a character, how to pronounce it, and its meaning(s).

Granted, in a phonetic system, knowing the spelling of a word helps a lot with the pronounciation, so there's a short cut there.

Though a normal person doesn't need more than 3,000 Chinese characters to be literate. For English, you need to know 10,000 words.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
sure it might be more compact and have higher information density, but that's like saying apple computers are sleeker, slimmer, and prettier. whoopty big ****in' do, if only a few people can actually use it for any real utility.

1.2 billion Chinese can't be wrong

[Q Classic]

Though a normal person doesn't need more than 3,000 Chinese characters to be literate. For English, you need to know 10,000 words.

why does this claim just remind me of the little appendix in the back of 1984 about newspeak?

1.2 billion Chinese can't be wrong

most computers in the world run microsoft windows. surely they can't be wrong.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by pchang
Sounds like someone needs to sneak into that shrine and add "Enola Gay".

That's the Yasukumi Shrine.

A better move would be to add the names of people killed by Japanese troops during WWII. That would be nice.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
most computers in the world run microsoft windows. surely they can't be wrong.

If people are forced to use Chinese by illegal means, you may have a point.