But yeah I otherwise agree with the post whole-heartedly.

And yet, perhaps not untrue. While I agree with everything you say in this post, I could tell you, roughly, the meaning of “pithecanthrope” when I was in high school. Of course, you have to know the Greek roots of English words, and I certainly would not claim it’s easier than the kanji. But if the study had used average American high school students instead of Yale profs, the result might well have been completely different.

Nothing else to say, I must get back to my reps so I can finish teh heisig.

Stay kool mate )))

The first, of course, is the assertion that only puppets of the US wanted to get rid of Kanji. Unless you’ve got some evidence that he’s a puppet, you have the case of, say, 志賀直哉, who wanted to do away with Japanese entirely and standardize the nation on French. I suspect you know all this already, but it’s hardly intellectually honest to leave it out.

Additionally, the “power of kanji” in your examples is actually the “power of translation”; neither the example you gave, “idiopathic ischemic infarction”, nor the example you quote, “pithecanthrope”, are English in any meaningful sense of the word; they’re pure transliterated Greek. You may as well ask someone (who is mysteriously well-educated save for basic Geography) what 亜米利加 means.

do you understand the term “idiopathic ischemic infarction” by any chance? and is there a more “laymans term” for it?

she responded:
an “ischemic infarction” is damaged caused to probably muscle (heart or skeletal) or brain from lack of blood flow, probably from a clot. It could also be from intense spasm, but that is more unlikely. The “idiopathic” part we used to say meant it came from the Latin “idio” meaning I don’t know and “pathic” what the hell caused it. It sounds like whatever happened came without a reason they can tell. If you know any more details, I can give you a better answer. Love you!

anyway… 御免

In my experience, for a native English speaker, Spanish is definitely easier to learn how to read than Japanese. So much so that, yeah, the two are pretty incomparable.

I’m not saying this to debate your main thesis (people should read a lot to get better at reading, regardless of the language), but I think that this piece might be better if a little more thought were given to the reality of coming from zero-to-Spanish compared to zero-to-Japanese.

I would guess that with just a little work, you could take someone with 1 year of basic high school Spanish and get them to “reading the microwave instructions” level Spanish in a month or two of intense reading. Most likely less, but I am being conservative here. There’s a ton of cognates in Spanish, and that coupled with a phonetic alphabet does make for pretty easy reading for Americans.

As a thought experiment, imagine starting a website called “All Spanish All the Time”, in which you speak frequently and with great pride about how you “learned to read a Spanish newspaper with just 18 months hard work.” I imagine the overall reaction would be less amazement than lots of people chiming in with, “Uh, me, too.”

Again, not at all trying to debate your main point that anyone can learn any language with enough exposure (be still, massive, hulking army of AJET commenter-writers, for this message comes not from foe but friend! dull not your carefully sharpened spears upon this comment-writer’s scrawny flesh!). Just giving my personal opinion that in this one area where this particular essay unnecessarily over-reached.

Thoughts?

“If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother … Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city … And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die.” Deuteronomy 21:18-21

Seems pretty decent….

that was far too much english.

From

Thanks for this great article.

You are giving us H-O-P-E.

* http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ed20081116a2.html

Haha. Nice. That was awesome.

I bet you my house that literacy in the Anglosphere would be a good deal higher if, for example, the word “cat” were represented by a simple drawing of a cat, and if “money” were represented by a drawing that looked similar (or even identical) to “gold”, and if “currency” were spelled with two pictures meaning “money-object”, etc. This is, as far as I can tell, the whole idea behind kanji, and why I hope I never see your old history teacher walking down the street. I fear we’d have, as Calvin once put it, “a frank exchange of ideas.” >:|

(P.S.: Yo dawg I heard u like footnotes so we put a footnote in yo footnote so u can comment on yo comment)

(On the subject of an alphabet/romanization coming into Japan)

I’m one of those people that, although I am learning Japanese, have always had a love for Chinese…And as a result I have a deep hatred for the over use of katakana, and words that don’t need to be taken from English, are still taken anyway…And also the “basic use Kanji” list(which isn’t needed)…

I just want to know what Japan’s going to be like 20, 30, 50 years down the line…Will kanji even be used? Will romaji be the main writing system? Will Japan become an English speaking country with horrible pronunciation (ヘッロ)?(<— please whatever you do, please don’t do that!!! My ears bleed and a baby is smacked every time an English word is spoken by a Japanese High-school student that has no interest in English, but is require to take English from an underly qualified JET Program teacher in order to pass…Sorry JETs, your not all bad )

All I can hope for is that the Japanese don’t one day wake up and think “you know? Maybe those foreigners were right! Kanji is useless, outdated, and time consuming! Anybody up for a romanization/revamp of Japanese?”

But this is just a point of view from a foreigner, living outside Japan, looking in…I think I’m just overly paranoid…