Question Doubling of i in katakana

[domfischer]

Why is the doubling of i different in these 2 examples (from a dictionary)?
シイタケ shiitake brown mushroom
シーズン shiizun season

any hint?

 

[mdchachi]

Good question. Maybe because it's an old word and this "spelling" has been carried forward from the past.
Or maybe because it's a traditional Japanese word not a (modern) foreign word.

 

[domfischer]

ah!... makes sense. If anything makes any sense with kana spelling
Thank you for your response

 

[domfischer]

Another question....
I know the Korean Hangul and wonder why Japanese never considered using the hangul as a writing system... it should work quite well phonetically and would get rid of the kana and kanji nightmares... I certainly understand the "political" reluctance... but still. Has it ever been considered?

 

[mdchachi]

Another question....
I know the Korean Hangul and wonder why Japanese never considered using the hangul as a writing system... it should work quite well phonetically and would get rid of the kana and kanji nightmares... I certainly understand the "political" reluctance... but still. Has it ever been considered?

It's certainly been considered but it never gained traction for whatever reason. There's still a niche organization dedicated to this very idea at カナモジ.
And if you care to read a discussion on this topic including pros and cons, there's one here.

 

[domfischer]

thank you again. I will follow up.... I love to be part of a "niche".

 

[Toritoribe]

Here's another thread about reasons why kanji is still used in Japanese.

Why didn't the Japanese adopt a fully phonetic alphabet system?

Like the Koreans or Vietnamese for example, who also used Chinese characters in the past. They already had Hiragana and Katakana, so all they had to do was use Hiragana for all words not just for grammar. If I am not mistaken from reading about Japanese history there was a Japanese guy who...

jref.com

 

[nice gaijin]

Here's another thread about reasons why kanji is still used in Japanese.

Why didn't the Japanese adopt a fully phonetic alphabet system?

Like the Koreans or Vietnamese for example, who also used Chinese characters in the past. They already had Hiragana and Katakana, so all they had to do was use Hiragana for all words not just for grammar. If I am not mistaken from reading about Japanese history there was a Japanese guy who...

jref.com

Another golden thread from the past, 2017 was a very good vintage indeed! Your final response to that "linguist" fella was so scathing I was almost embarrassed for him... You burned him so badly I believe he's still scarred from it... if he could read it at all...

 

[domfischer]

고마워

 

[domfischer]

그래도 한글을 실험해보는 건 의미가 있을 것 같습니다.

 

[Toritoribe]

Er, did you read the threads we provided?

The advantage of using Chinese characters (hanja) is pointed out also in South Korea, and actually, hanja is still used there (not so common, though).
Korean mixed script - Wikipedia

Why didn't the Japanese adopt a fully phonetic alphabet system?

Like the Koreans or Vietnamese for example, who also used Chinese characters in the past. They already had Hiragana and Katakana, so all they had to do was use Hiragana for all words not just for grammar. If I am not mistaken from reading about Japanese history there was a Japanese guy who...

jref.com

Japanese already has original phonetic symbols "kana(hiragana/katakana)", so it's totally meaningless to use Hangul even for people who think Japan should abolish kanji.

 

[nice gaijin]

Hmm, I have a lot of thoughts on this...

I'd like to hear an argument for dropping the Japanese writing system in favor of Hangul, just for fun. @domfischer, please give it a shot. I'd like some examples of Japanese phrases written in Hangul, to demonstrate its superiority. 한국어를 잘 못해요, but I can read Hangul so I'm looking forward to this.

It's certainly been considered but it never gained traction for whatever reason. There's still a niche organization dedicated to this very idea at カナモジ.
And if you care to read a discussion on this topic including pros and cons, there's one here.

I can't get over the fact that this website uses kanji...

 

[domfischer]

제가 할게요.... 시간을 좀 주세요.
재미있을 거예요...

 

[domfischer]

hum.... I am not sure if this is OK but I could refer to one of my books: "How to read and write Korean - for Adult Learners" (2020) - Amazon.com

Dominique Fischer

 

[johnnyG]

And if you care to read a discussion on this topic including pros and cons, there's one here.

I looked at that, but it's not the 'previous discussion' that first came to mind!

The one where that fellow (a linguist?) was persistently suggesting one or another system using romaji?

 

[mdchachi]

I can't get over the fact that this website uses kanji...

They talk about that here. But it makes sense in a way. You can't talk about adopting Esperanto in Esperanto if people can't read it. I guess technically people could read theirs though.

 

[nice gaijin]

They talk about that here. But it makes sense in a way. You can't talk about adopting Esperanto in Esperanto if people can't read it. I guess technically people could read theirs though.

Exactly, they aren't arguing to change the actual language... so just like Korean it would still have a lexicon built on kanji, which would cause issues I addressed in my post here

They're talking about reforming the way Japanese is written because it's supposedly better to simplify the language by eliminating kanji... But the only place that actually applied is in children's books, which I find harder to read sometimes because it actually takes longer to read certain words phonetically than with immediately recognizable ideograms.

The reason I suspect no one who has proposed simplifying Japanese by using this or that syllabary has yet provided samples of text to demonstrate the superiority of their idea... is that the resulting text probably would immediately expose the flaws in that idea.

This question comes to mind: in Taiwan they have a phonetic writing system called bopomofo, which serves as a decent study aid for learning Mandarin pronunciation, but is isn't really used for anything beyond that (e.g. how hiragana and katakana are used alongside kanji in Japan). Why haven't they ditched hanzi and switched to use bopomofo exclusively?

 

[Buntaro]

Why is the doubling of i different in these 2 examples (from a dictionary)?
シイタケ shiitake brown mushroom
シーズン shiizun season

Katakana is often used to write words that are borrowed from somewhere else. (Katakana is used in other situations as well.) It depends on where the word was borrowed from. The word シーズン is borrowed from an English word ("season") and it contains a "long vowel", thus the use of a line.

In contrast, the word シイタケ does not come from English, it was borrowed from another Japanese word, the hiragana word しいたけ. The イ katakana character is used because it corresponds to the い hiragana character.

Many people think katakana is only used to write words borrowed from English, but this is not the case. Take a look at this video from 4:23 for an explanation of the various situations in which katakana is used. The use of katakana in the above example シイタケ is probably an example of using katakana to express emotion, as explained at 4:57. (As explained in the video, this use of katakana in Japanese is similar to the use of italics in English.)

 

[Toritoribe]

Why is the doubling of i different in these 2 examples (from a dictionary)?
シイタケ shiitake brown mushroom
シーズン shiizun season

Before WW2, katakana was used in kanji and kana mixed writing texts. Hiragana was used to write the names of plants and animals in that era. After WW2, hiragana is used mainly instead of katakana, so katakana started to be used for plant and animal names instead of hiragana. This rule is applied only to academic use of names, so hiragana しいたけ is used, for example, for the name as food.

内閣告示第三十二号
当用漢字表
使用上の注意事項
ホ、動植物の名称は、かな書きにする。

当用漢字表 - Wikisource

ja.wikisource.org

動植物名を、学術的名称として使う場合には、カタカナで書くことになっています。例えばバラ科サクラ属。
（NHK編新用字用語辞典P15）

動物や植物の名の表記。カタカナ、ひらがな、漢字、などその基準は？ | ことば（放送用語） - 放送現場の疑問・視聴者の疑問 | NHK放送文化研究所

Q：動物や植物の名を、カタカナ　ひらがな　漢字と色々書いていますが、その基準はどうなっているのでしょうか。A：動物や植物（含む野菜）を表す漢字が常用漢字表にあれば漢字。なければひらがなで書きます。学術的な場合は、カタカナで書きます。解説：動植物名は、普通はひらがなか漢字で書きます。まず、ひらがなで書くのは、動植物名を表す文字が常用漢字表や常用漢字音訓表に含まれていない場合です。動物では、「とら」「くま」など。植物では、「ひのき」「らん」など。動植物名のほとんどがこれにあたります。動植物名を、学術的名称として使う場合には、カタカナで書くことになっています。例えばバラ科サクラ属。（NHK編新...

www.nhk.or.jp

As for the method of writing long vowels in romaji, macron is used for long vowels in the most-commonly-used system "Hepburn romanization". Thus, shīzun is usually used for シーズン, not shiizun. Please refer to the following explanation in wikipedia.

Hepburn romanization - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Majestic]

I sense a new self-published book coming from the Doctor.

 

[mdchachi]

As for the method of writing long vowels in romaji, macron is used for long vowels in the most-commonly-used system "Hepburn romanization". Thus, shīzun is usually used for シーズン, not shiizun. Please refer to the following explanation in wikipedia.

How about the use of ー in katakana? Was it there from the beginning?

 

[Toritoribe]

While katakana was already used in Heian period, the long vowel mark appeared in Edo period for the first time. It's made from the right side of a kanji 引, similar to the etymology of other katakana, to transcribe foreign words, so there were examples where the vertical line version was used even in horizontal writing in Meiji period.

東京堂出版の国語学大事典によると、…はっきりと、長音の意味で「ー」を使ったと認められる最初の人は、新井白石で、イタリア人宣教師のシドッチを取り調べてまとめた「西洋紀聞」（1715年頃）に登場する。
…
長音符「ー」が漢字「引」の旁から来ている、という意識はその後も強く残ったらしく、横書きの時に、たとえば「インタ｜ネット」のように長音符だけは縦に書くスタイルが、その後も長く行われている。明治時代でも夏目漱石がメモ書きでこのスタイルを使っている…

日本語における長音符の起源

 

[Buntaro]

get rid of the kana and kanji nightmares.

Simply said, the Japanese language cannot function without kanji, either in its written form or its spoken form. This is because too many kanji sound alike. For example, in my dictionary, there are 96 kanji pronounced "to", 128 kanji pronounced "shi", and 200 kanji pronounced "ko"! If we were to write these phonetically, we would never be able to get our idea across quickly and succinctly. When speaking Japanese, I have seen Japanese people "writing" kanji on their palm (with just their finger) and letting the other person see what they are "writing" so the both people can confirm which kanji is being spoken about. (My favorite is "sentaku", which can mean either doing the laundry or having an election, depending on the usage.)

 

[nice gaijin]

@domfischer, still eagerly awaiting your thesis on how hangul could be used to express Japanese, I sincerely hope you are working on it. I find the idea intriguing and I'm willing to hear you out.

 

[Toritoribe]

The most common way to explain uncertain kanji is to use another reading of the kanji. For example, undrentide-san mentioned about 湖沼学（こしょうがく） in the thread "Should Japan Abolish Kanji?", which mdchachi-san linked above. This is an uncommon word, but it's easy to show the correct kanji of こしょう by saying みずうみ and ぬま. Furthermore, みずうみ and ぬま explain the meaning of こしょうがく quite clearly and easily.

As grapefruit-san wrote in the thread, usually the kanji can be interpreted from the meaning of the word which is provided by the context, so this method is often used for proper nouns such like people's names or location names.
When I participated in a Buddhist memorial service, we were talking about three women who had the same name in our relatives. They had married our relatives and changed their names, so they became the same name as a result. When explaining their given name なおこ, I said the first one was 和尚さんの「しょう」, the second was 直角の「ちょく」, and the last was 菜の花の「な」に稲穂の「ほ」. (The last one was the youngest, so an old aunt said "she is young, so her name is the most "fashionable(しゃれてる)".) I think this might be close to a way to explain spelling of a word/name in English, e.g., "N for November" or "P for potato."


Even when the kanji itself is uncertain, a method to explain the components of the kanji is more commonly used. One day, when I made out a receipt, I asked the customer's name. They answered their name あさひけんせつ. I asked about the kanji of あさひ with saying "Is that あさひ of 朝日新聞?". They said "It's きょくじつの「きょく」", and continued "漢数字の「九」に「ひ」です" as an additional explanation. They might think きょくじつ（＝旭日） was not an easy-to-understand word, so would add another explanation. There are many homophones for ひ, but it's easy to interpret that it refered to 日 since we were talking about the kanji of あさひ. Plus, there also was no necessity to explain the right position of 日 (not the lower side of 九, not the right side of 九 completely apart from it, etc.) . This is because we both understood that we had knowledge about kanji.


Sorry for nitpicking, but "having an election" is "senkyo(選挙)." "Sentaku(選択)" means choice/selection in general.