Date: Thu, 29 Oct 92 18:17:42 MST
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
Subject: Re: In defense of kanji in Japanese
Organization: Brigham Young University, Provo UT USA
From: luke@newt.ee.byu.edu (David Luke)

In article <1992Oct29.220727.9291@wam.umd.edu> rsrodger@wam.umd.edu (Robert Stephen Rodgers) writes:
>In article <1992Oct29.165055.18795@adobe.com> lunde@adobe.com (Ken Lunde) writes:
>>meaning (rather than reading outloud in class), the reading of the kanji
>>really makes no difference. It seems like your point of view is from one who
>>is not a native speaker. I am sure native speakers would disagree. I am not
>>saying that I am a native speaker (quite *far* from it).
>
>	One is _never_ reading for meaning.

I really hate to jump into what promises to be another Holy Romanization
War-type battle, but I can't let this go.  What do you mean by this?  I,
for one, always read for meaning (well, almost always :) ) in both English
and Japanese.  Why would anyone read something if they didn't care what it
meant?

>	The pictograph issue has 
>	been beaten to death a dozen times in this group and I am not
>	going to go back into it.  For good information on the fallacy
>	of the pictograph,see Unger, "Another Great Wall?" ("the myth
>	of the pictographic character") and <name escaped me>
>	"The Chinese Language".  

I'd like to see these.  Are they books? papers? magazine articles?  Can you
give a better reference?

Without even reading them, I can tell you that anyone who says that kanji
don't have inherent meaning must have absolutely no experience with the 
language.  Non-natives like myself are _always_ reading things without
knowing the proper reading.  Example: how do you say "file name" in Japanese?
I'm not sure, and I've read the word hundreds of times.  I have no problem
with the meaning, but I don't know if the "name" character is "na" or "mei"
or something weird.  I could come up with dozens of other examples, if you'd
like.  And it's not just non-natives.  I have had the experience dozens of
times of asking a native speaker the reading for a character and having them
answer, "well, I don't know for sure how to read it, but it means -----."

>	I really wasn't referring just to foreigners, but rather to readers
>	on the whole.  Japanese highschoolers are not nearly as literate
>	(in terms of abilty) as american students because they cannot 
>	read a newspaper if it isn't furigana'd.  I'd say this pretty
>	well shows the difficulty of the writing system (Please don't contradict
>	this, yes--I'm blanketing here.  Yes, some can read a good portion,
>	but grade schoolers in the States can read the Washington Post..>..

Hmm, this sounds like another wild claim that I'd like to see some statistics
on.

>	Right.  Plus, the little fact that Japanese words grow
>	awfully long when you start comparing them to the 
>	english words (i.e. any of the polite forms that aren't
>	specilized--onani-simasu, onani-no-narimasu....) 

What would be a good test is to check a large number of books that are
available in translation in both languages.  The few that I have seen and
compared seem to be longer in Japanese.  If you want compact, I don't think
Japanese is the choice.

>	The kanji are _not_ part of the Japanese language.  They
>	are a method of encoding the sounds of the language into
>	print.  Yes, the input bottleneck _is_ the fault of the kanji.

Hmm.  Good philosophical/linguistic question.  What is language?  Is it
spoken only?  Written only?  Some of both?  Neither?  I doubt that you're
going to get any agreement in this one.  IMO, you can't divorce the spoken
language from the written in a language like Japanese.  I'm sure others
will disagree.

>	I'll admit that I'm a little undecided about what the 
>	fate of the Kanji should be.

When you decide, let the rest of us know so that we can trash our Nelsons. :)

>	If anyone starts in on me with the "Kanji _ARE_ ideographs" 
>	thread, I will be very unpleased.  That thread takes on an
>	almost religious aspect.  Besides, the non-pictograph crowd
>	has science on their side, the pro-picto side has only "feeling"..

Oops, you should have put this up at the top.  Too late now.  I'd still
like to see some references -- I've heard "has science on their side" to
justify lots of things far stranger than this...

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  David Luke                      "There's nothing worse than a brilliant     |
|  luke@wombat.ee.byu.edu           image of a fuzzy concept."                 |
|                                                               -- Ansel Adams |
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan