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OT: Linguistics [Was: Cobol work?]
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| Oliver Wong 2005-10-17, 6:55 pm |
| "Richard" <riplin@Azonic.co.nz> wrote in message
news:1129582015.765797.209780@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>
> Where pictogram systems don't work better is where there are 'words'
> that are new or have not been seen before. With assembled words it is
> possible to work out what they mean sufficiently.
I've asked my Japanese friends what do they do about kanjis (Japanese
characters) that they have never encountered before. Apparently, Kanjis are
composed of radicals. Some radicals indicate meaning, and some radicals
indicate pronounciation, so your typical Japanese person should be able to
understand and pronounce kanjis that (s)he's never seen before. This is
similar to how we can take English words and decompose them into their Gr
or Latin roots to guess at their meaning, even when we've never encountered
the word before.
The big problem Japanese tend to have is with names (e.g. family names).
Kanjis usually have multiple pronounciations with different associated
meanings (sort of like homonyms in English). When these kanjis are used for
communication, you can usually tell which meaning (and thus which
pronounciation) to use via context, but when these Kanjis are used for
names, you can't rely on the sequence of kanjis to have any meaning, so you
can't use context to figure out what the pronounciation should be.
When filling out govermental forms in Japan, one is often asked to write
their name twice: once in Kanji, and once in Katakana (a syllabic alphabet,
in which every character has an unambiguous pronounciation). This is similar
to English speakers writing their name twice on important documents: Once as
a signature, and once in print.
- Oliver
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| Lueko Willms 2005-10-29, 7:55 am |
| .. On 17.10.05
wrote owong@castortech.com (Oliver Wong)
on /COMP/LANG/COBOL
in ryU4f.40597$ir4.6791@edtnps90
about OT: Linguistics [Was: Cobol work?]
OW> kanjis (Japanese characters)
kanjis are actually _Chinese_ characters. Specifically Japanese are
the Katakana (which you mentioned) and Hiragana.
Yours,
Lüko Willms http://www.willms-edv.de
/--------- L.WILLMS@jpberlin.de -- Alle Rechte vorbehalten --
Der Mann hatte soviel Verstand, daß er zu fast nichts mehr in der Welt zu gebrauchen war. -G.C.Lichtenberg
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