Elizabeth
先輩
- 22 Apr 2003
- 9,839
- 135
None of the WWWJDIC files have the entries in any particular order, never mind the definitions.
None of the WWWJDIC files have the entries in any particular order, never mind the definitions.Hmm, it seems we have a little problem here. Is WWWJDIC assigning too many meanings to the kanji? Also, it doesn't seem to indicate it's a characters primary meaning...
It's the definitions that are the problem, seems unsolvable. They can at least be organized by their grade, which is nice and all if that was the most important thing. Quite problematic.None of the WWWJDIC files have the entries in any particular order, never mind the definitions.
Ok, but the kanji don't have suitable English readings assigned. Aren't they needed? I guess I'll take a look at written Chinese, can't hurtI think the reason Chinese was suggested instead of Japanese is that it's grammatically similar to English, and it uses hanzi exclusively.
None if the kana definitions for kanji aren't all meanings. Now you're not telling me that some of the readings are meanings and some are just sounds, are you? If so, that would be a major problem for me. This may sound blunt, and I'm sorry to say it, but what's the point in learning thousands of characters if they're used based on both meaning and sounds? I was under the impression that in written Japanese this is not done, except for names (where kanji are used for their reading alone, might be wrong)? Using characters just for their meaning is what got me interested in the Japanese writing system in the first place.What's the point of picking Japanese for its use of hiragana and katakana when you don't really understand the function they serve, and you don't intend to use them anyways.
Hey, I've already said it's an experiment and that I might fail. It seems that this is going to fail, and that's fine with meAnd you're basically not interested in actually learning a real language before you highjack their writing system, which (as your example leads us to believe) won't be useful for anyone because the results are illegible.
Tele: is a Greek prefix meaning "distant." – From wikipedia"far-speak" for telephone?
No, I don't refuse to, I just haven't made up my mind about learning it yet, that's something else. As for context changes, they happen in English, too. I wouldn't be surprised if it happens in all languages.Even the dictionaries aren't very good at explaining all the meanings and their contexts. Kanji's meanings can CHANGE depending on their context, but you have no idea how or when because you refuse to learn the language.
When I first started reading about Chinese characters, I thought it might be a good way for people who speak different languages to communicate with each other, and this is what seemed so interesting about them.Interest in ideograms is fine, but you should maybe think about what you intend to do with this.
Guess what, it has actually crossed my mind. Now I doubt that I could do it properly, I'm a computer nerd and not a linguist, but I think it would be a serious possibility if enough effort would be put into it. It's just that I was hoping that Chinese characters could be used instead, because they're already used.Or you might as well come up with your own "language independent" ideograms.
What? Are you asking if there are English readings for Japanese characters? Since you like this example so much, 水槽 is "read" as "suisou," it MEANS "fish tank" in Japanese. It's not read "fish tank," because 水槽 is not an English word.Ok, but the kanji don't have suitable English readings assigned. Aren't they needed? I guess I'll take a look at written Chinese, can't hurt
words written in kana have meaning, and sometimes kanji don't just represent their meanings. Kanji for names still have meaning, and they're often chosen for that, as well as the way they sound, or even the number of strokes in the characters.None if the kana definitions for kanji aren't all meanings. Now you're not telling me that some of the readings are meanings and some are just sounds, are you? If so, that would be a major problem for me. What's the point in learning thousands of characters if they're used based on both meaning and sounds? I was under the impression that in written Japanese this is not done, except for names (where kanji are used for their reading alone, might be wrong)? Using characters just for their meaning is what got me interested in the Japanese writing system in the first place.
Language is more than just a series of concepts string together. Chinese is the closest thing to what you are talking about, as the rules of grammar are much looser. Being able to read kanji for just its meaning will give you nothing more than a vague notion of what the sentence is about, which is pretty much how my Taiwanese friends feel about looking at a Japanese sentence.As for learning Japanese, sounds nice to me, but being able to read it, is the most important aspect to me. If I have to memorize the multiple meanings and readings for thousands of kanji, then the writing system has lost the main part of what made it seem interesting: characters that are used exclusively for their meaning.
So you're talking about using kanji to replace greek roots? The reason "telephone" and "television" have meaning in English is because they've been incorporated into the accepted lexicon. "Hey Billy, John is on the far-speak for you, he says to turn the far-seeing to channel 10" Now replace half of those words with abstract imagery. This is supposed to make communication easier? And You're STILL relying on English structure and etymology, so where is the language independence?Tele: is a Greek prefix meaning "distant." – From wikipedia
Phone: a speech sound considered as a physical event without regard to its place in the sound system of a language. - From Merriam-Webster
Now 'far speak' starts to make sense. Same with television: 'far seeing'.
People already do that, through written Chinese.When I first started reading about Chinese characters I thought it might be a good way for people who speak different languages to communicate with each other, and this is what seemed so interesting about them.
It looks like what I want to do mostly, but this example I made by hand apparently didn't turn out quite as nicely as I would've wanted...
Yes, I've seen that. Compounds don't always seem to be logical. A good example is 'silver river' for galaxy, the English compound 'star system' is much clearer. Yup, it's a problem.
After making this example, I'm not surprised...
List made by undrentide:
良日 : this is a possible combination but never ever used as a greeting. - I came up with this one myself...
驚 : means "surprise". To wonder in this context is translated as ～かと思う. - WWWJDIC says: wonder; be surprised; frightened; amazed
華字 : does not exist - should it be 漢字? - WWWJDIC says: Chinese character. Picked the wrong compound...
義 : is used in the word 定義 (definition) but when used on its own, it means justice. - WWWJDIC says: righteousness; justice; morality; honor; loyalty; meaning
満 : means full. Sufficient is 十分／充分. - Error on my part.
成 : assume it is meant to "become" but it is commonly written in hiragana なる. Yes, become. For what I want to do, hiragana shouldn't be used, only kanji or Latin characters.
勘能: does not make sense to me. Maybe 堪能? which does mean proficient. - WWWJDIC says: (adj-na) (1) proficient; skillful; (n,vs) (2) satisfaction; (n,vs) (3) {Buddh} fortitude; (P)
How can this possibly be considered to be a fault of the dictionary as a whole when the blame clearly lies with one unfortunate individual.Hmm, it seems we have a little problem here. Is WWWJDIC assigning too many meanings to the kanji? Also, it doesn't seem to indicate it's a characters primary meaning...
A good example: 得what's the point in learning thousands of characters if they're used based on both meaning and sounds?
I was wondering if learning the kanji with just their meanings is enough to become proficient in their use. The point is, that learning their readings seems to be a waste of time if you're learning Japanese, because you should be able to connect the vocabulary to the kanji based on their meaning.
Is this the case, or is it better to also learn the kanji readings? If so, why?
No, I'm not asking that, and I think I'm starting to see the problem here.What? Are you asking if there are English readings for Japanese characters? Since you like this example so much, 水槽 is "read" as "suisou," it MEANS "fish tank" in Japanese. It's not read "fish tank," because 水槽 is not an English word.
That's not exactly what I wanted to hear. I used to think that if you know the meaning of kanji, that you'd be able to have more than just a vague understanding of text. Basically I thought that the kanji readings were simply their meanings in a different language.Being able to read kanji for just its meaning will give you nothing more than a vague notion of what the sentence is about
If appropriate, yes. It seems to me that for telephone and television it might be a good way.So you're talking about using kanji to replace greek roots?
Of course, but that doesn't mean that the parts 'tele', 'phone' and 'vision' don't have meanings that describe the whole words, which is a little obvious in the case of 'vision', but still applies to 'tele' and 'phone' as well.The reason "telephone" and "television" have meaning in English is because they've been incorporated into the accepted lexicon.
In the case of telephone and television that is actually what it says if taken literally. They're actually quite reasonable examples of compounds where the new word gets it's meaning from the combined meaning of the words used to make the new word. I see no big problem with that."Hey Billy, John is on the far-speak for you, he says to turn the far-seeing to channel 10" Now replace half of those words with abstract imagery.
In the case of two people who don't share a language, trying to communicate with characters used for their meaning is a whole lot better then using hand signs, etc. So it would probably make communication easier in such a case.This is supposed to make communication easier?
You have to start somewhere. Seeing how I only know know English and Dutch, I'm going to start with one of those two. It can be applied to any language, and English is just a starting point. It's, of course, perfectly possible for language independence to be impossible.And You're STILL relying on English structure and etymology, so where is the language independence?
Yes, people in China do this. It would be nice to not have to learn a language to be able to use kanji. I simply assumed that it might be possible.People already do that, through written Chinese.
It would've been nice to see some pointers about the most often used meaning for the kanji, that would already make things a little easier. Perhaps I just missed something in the manual for kanjidic.How can this possibly be considered to be a fault of the dictionary as a whole when the blame clearly lies with one unfortunate individual.
Yes, the edict file used does use such ordering, and this is also said in the manual, so it's entirely my mistake.Quite obviously no one who hasn't made an effort to learn the language is in a position to recognize 1). when there are non-standard items in the vocabulary of a lot of Japanese speakers, such as rarely used variations on a kanji compound (勘能 for 堪能), which ARE duly listed by in order of priority by WWWJDIC just not picked up on by any random interloper not even pretending to have the most rudimentary interpretive skills.
Again, my mistake.2). How the "contraction" of a compound or the shaving off of a few base kana here and there will hinder the (your) intended meaning. Enough of that above.
The effort is purely experimental. It's simply based on an idea I had. I was thinking that it could be nice if some sort of text filter could be applied to text in a web browser, which would change English words to kanji and kanji compounds, seeing how much I read online. In other words, it's nothing more than an experiment. If it would turn out useful, then perhaps others might show interest, but that is not my first intention.But make a finding one way or the other. Is this an effort directed towards English speakers looking to exercise their kanji skills (in which case you'll need to partner with a native Japanese/Chinese speaker with adequate search/dictionary skills) ? Making sure first, of course, there is anyone available and willing to study kanji interspersed an English text.
Or, conversely, is it a programming challenge game marketed to an Asian audience trying to learn English (precise kanji therefore becomes a little less crucial and maybe even part of the 'play' with direct English equivalents, run with the "day book" example...) ?
Yes, this makes it quite clear, thanksA good example: 得
When reading as とく, 得 can never mean "can, may, able to." The reading should be え or う if you want to imply "can, may, able to" (as an auxiliary verb 得[え]る/得[う]る).
Is this an answer to your original question?
And again, you're back to making up new words when perfectly good ones exist within established languages.In the case of telephone and television that is actually what it says if taken literally. They're actually quite reasonable examples of compounds where the new word gets it's meaning from the combined meaning of the words used to make the new word. I see no big problem with that.
And since you're using English etymology to decide which characters to use, how is one supposed to understand what the other is writing if they don't understand the English structure or the roots of character compounds? The end-result is, at best, a vague idea of what's being discussed.In the case of two people who don't share a language, trying to communicate with characters used for their meaning is a whole lot better then using hand signs, etc. So it would probably make communication easier in such a case.
OK, new situation. So someone who speaks Russian does this, using Russian sentence structure with cyrillic characters, and Russian etymology to decide which characters get put together. Is the end-result going to look anything like the same approach to English, or Arabic, or Korean? At best, you're going to have to basically guess what is being said, because you don't understand Russian characters or etymology. Instead of "far-speak," telephone is more like "electric conversation" in Kanji (電話), if one person is saying 電話 and the other says 遠話 or 遠言, how is one supposed to understand the other?You have to start somewhere. Seeing how I only know know English and Dutch, I'm going to start with one of those two. It can be applied to any language, and English is just a starting point. It's, of course, perfectly possible for language independence to be impossible.
The way that ideograms are combined is an important part of the languages that use them, and part of the reason I think kanji are fun and interesting to learn. You're talking about taking away that framework that makes it easy for me to look at a word in Japanese I've never seen before and have at least a good idea of what it means and how it's pronounced.Yes, people in China do this. It would be nice to not have to learn a language to be able to use kanji. I simply assumed that it might be possible.
I'm not making up new words, I'm just looking at the meaning for parts of existing words.And again, you're back to making up new words when perfectly good ones exist within established languages.
That's because they're not used in English. You can't just take something, apply it to something that normally doesn't use it, and expect the result to be useful immediately. It doesn't mean it can't be made useful, but it just wont be out of the box.You're already mixing and matching characters regardless of their real-world use.
Language independence would be very nice, yes. It's a lot easier to simply start by replacing words with kanji and compounds directly.Either way, your approach requires people to be familiar with English structure and vocabulary, in addition to the set (or sets) of ideograms you're trying to use. Then you said that it should be language-independant
That's the second step, to see if it would make any kind of sense. Nothing more.And since you're using English etymology to decide which characters to use, how is one supposed to understand what the other is writing if they don't understand the English structure or the roots of character compounds? The end-result is, at best, a vague idea of what's being discussed.
Yes, but people without a common language would simply only write kanji. I know it's not going to be perfect, but ir would still be much better than trying to explain things with pictures and hand signs. The point is that everyone who has good knowledge of kanji knows that 火 means fire, and 山 means mountain. I'm assuming that anyone who knows these two will easily guess the intended meaning of 火山 if they know you're not writing Japanese or Chinese.OK, new situation. So someone who speaks Russian does this, using Russian sentence structure with cyrillic characters, and Russian etymology to decide which characters get put together. Is the end-result going to look anything like the same approach to English, or Arabic, or Korean? At best, you're going to have to basically guess what is being said, because you don't understand Russian characters or etymology.
I don't think everyone is going to find it difficult to guess the meaning of those. To have an electric conversation you need a telephone, and to speak far you also need a telephone. Seems easy enough to guess to me.Instead of "far-speak," telephone is more like "electric conversation" in Kanji (電話), if one person is saying 電話 and the other says 遠話 or 遠言, how is one supposed to understand the other?
I think you might be underestimating peoples ability to properly guess the meaning of compounds, although in some cases it obviously wont be easy. Further more, it might be an idea to combine kanji by their main meaning in a logical way to indicate the meaning of the intended word. Perhaps none of this is easy, but who says it has to be easy? It's just going to be much easier than communicating with hand signs.This approach isn't language-independent. In fact, it increases your dependence. How do you expect people to communicate across a language barrier when they still rely on their native languages and can't agree on a common vocabulary.
Yes, I am, just not for Japanese. When reading or writing Japanese, you can't get rid of that framework, while if you want to use kanji in languages that don't use them, then you have to get rid of that frame work.The way that ideograms are combined is an important part of the languages that use them, and part of the reason I think kanji are fun and interesting to learn. You're talking about taking away that framework that makes it easy for me to look at a word in Japanese I've never seen before and have at least a good idea of what it means and how it's pronounced.
I don't think everyone is going to find it difficult to guess the meaning of those. To have an electric conversation you need a telephone, and to speak far you also need a telephone. Seems easy enough to guess to me.
I think you might be underestimating peoples ability to properly guess the meaning of compounds, although in some cases it obviously wont be easy. Further more, it might be an idea to combine kanji by their main meaning in a logical way to indicate the meaning of the intended word. Perhaps none of this is easy, but who says it has to be easy? It's just going to be much easier than communicating with hand signs.
Then you are removing the thing that makes learning kanji intuitive. Without learning ideograms within the context of a language, how do you expect people to learn them in the first place?Yes, I am, just not for Japanese. When reading or writing Japanese, you can't get rid of that framework, while if you want to use kanji in languages that don't use them, then you have to get rid of that frame work.
You know full well that hand signs that aren't related to sign language can't possibly cover everything kanji and compounds can, and that this is a bad example.Yeah, it's way easier to learn Chinese characters and use them to represent the Greek roots of English words.
Perhaps by simply memorizing them?Then you are removing the thing that makes learning kanji intuitive. Without learning ideograms within the context of a language, how do you expect people to learn them in the first place?
Then I wrote this as a correction:Thanks guys, good explenations.
That's what I was afraid of... It's such a pity that the Chinese characters aren't used for just their meaning everywhere, damned readings. Then again, because of cultural differences you'd get this problem:
Aquarium -> Fish tank -> 魚槽 (English)
Aquarium -> Water tribe building -> 水族館 (Japanese)
The problem here is that water tribe building doesn't make much sense in English, and fish tank might only make sense in Japanes because of English influences.
I know I'm guilty of keeping this going, but I have to say: I'm not going to stop this just because someone doesn't like the idea and is trying to convince me it's pointless. This is something I will have to find out for myself. It's just an experiment any way.Didn't know that, cool
Modified:
Big aquarium -> Big fish tank/Fish tank building -> 大魚槽/魚槽館 (English)
Big aquarium -> Water tribe building -> 水族館 (Japanese)
Aquarium -> Fish tank -> 魚槽 (English)
Aquarium -> Water tank -> 水槽 (Japanese)
Can't say I disagree with this actually. All this may just be a bad idea, unfortunately. Well, in the end it doesn't matter much, it's just an idea, and not all ideas are goodand in all three cases, if anyone wants to understand the output, they have to be familiar with the meanings of the characters you're using, on top of the language you use for grammatical structure. How are people supposed to learn kanji just for their meanings without some sort of pedagogical approach? In the meantime, the only people that could possibly understand the output are people who have studied the languages that already use kanji or hanzi (ie Japanese or Chinese dialects). BUT they then have to do the extra guesswork because the compound vocabulary is different from the ones they're already familiar with.
The kanji are what seemed most interesting, yes, although I admit having developed an interest in the Japanese language. It's not a bad idea to just learn the language and it's writing system properly.If your interest lies in ideograms alone, even if you were to become "proficient in their use," that's a lot of work to learn a language's writing system and still end up being almost completely illiterate and unable to speak or understand the language. It doesn't make sense to learn the language first in order to familiarize yourself with the characters?
I've actually studied (over a year ago now) a bunch of them for their meaning alone, and of course by writing them down as well, and it didn't seem to be that difficult. It never occurred to me that learning the readings as well might make it easier rather than harder. Guess it can't hurt to do it that way.Learning kanji solely for its meaning makes it exponentially more difficult to study, because the readings actually help people retain the characters. Does that answer your initial question?
It's actually the sheer number of kanji that made it seem like a good idea to get rid of as much unneeded information as possible, simply to save time.At first, learning kanji with the readings and everything may seem overwhelming, but later on, the readings become very helpful;
Okey, that's clear, and I suppose most kanji don't have ten meanings and readings each anyway. The guy who made this site might disagree, however: All Japanese All The Time. I've provided this link just for the sake of argument.they make it easy to recognize new combinations both for their meanings and their pronunciation.
Since I've only studied about 70 for meanings alone, and can still recall about 40 to 50 over a year later, it didn't occur to me. I can see it will be different when you've learned hundreds, to thousands.When you only have a meaning assigned to each character, it makes it much more difficult to sort all of that data in your head as your vocabulary expands.
It doesn't have to be easy, hehe, few things in life are truly easy. Not a problem.This is very helpful, but doesn't necessarily make it easy, because most kanji are not limited to just one reading, or even one meaning.
Don't worry about it, you're not discouraging me at all, you're just saying how it is.I don't mean to discourage you from trying to do something with kanji, but there's an awful lot of information, and if you don't learn Japanese (or Chinese), your knowledge of kanji will be a lot of effort for limited rewards. Studying one of them will not only help you learn the characters, it will give you a better idea of how they are used in the context of a real language, and you'll be bettering yourself by learning a new language!
I probably am going to learn Japanese. You've convinced me that it's better to learn kanji in combination with a language. As for English, you're right, English spelling is no fun at all.kana would be much easier to learn, especially if you don't intend to continue your language study beyond the writing system. One thing to consider is that English spelling is not good at following rules, so the sound for "oooh" is present in multiple settings; even sounds that are spelled completely different sound identical, or sounds that are spelled the same produce different sounds. For example: through, threw, you, too, to, two, thou, though, toe, sew, so, mow, bough, beau, etc. It's this non-conformity to a single set of rules that is the reason that English is the only language that has spelling contests.
Actually, a program that converts Latin to kana, isn't that hard to write at all. All it really has to do is convert individual characters and character combinations that exist in kana. Basically the sound is ignored, that would make writing the program much harder, without much benefit. It would simply convert, say, all 'te's in the text to て or all the separately convertible 'e's to え. This is then done for all such replaceable characters.Also worth mentioning is the fact that Japanese has far fewer vowels and consonant sounds than English (depending on the dialect and accent), so a whole lot of English sounds get pronounced the same in Japanese, but the lack of standardized spelling makes this harder for a computer to convert.
While I'm not familiar with Spanish, Dutch, which is my native language, is quite similar in pronunciation to Japanese, or let's just say much closer than English. Perhaps that's useful?Something like Spanish is a little closer to Japanese phonetics; I used to write Spanish phrases in katakana to help practice reading and writing them. On the other hand, Japanese kana pronunciation is standard, so to convert a line of text from kana to romaji (Japanese in English characters) would be pretty simple. Maybe that's a good place to start?
You're right, that's always the best way, of courseIf you're looking for a study aid, however, I'd recommend just practicing reading things in Japanese.