How do you keep things seperate in your mind? (Kanji/Kana ma

[Feba]

Humorous Sidenote: I literally spent 3 minutes trying to figure out what & was.

It could be worse. I once had to explain to someone what & was. I mean, they'd never even heard of an ampersand. We're talking people who have lived in America all their life, either a high school or college grad (can't remember who it was), not knowing what it meant.

Who actually uses a | in day to day speech though? and 1 and I are easily to tell apart, since 1 is hardly ever written alone (and when it is, it's almost always 'one')

[doinkies]

In some fonts, it's hard to tell apart I from l...

When I was younger and first saw a mention of "Kim Jong Il" in print, the uppercase I and lowercase l looked the same. At first I thought it was "Kim Jong II"...

[Yudan Taiteki]

| is frequently used in computer contexts, as a symbol for "or".

[shin1ro]

I recently saw someone wrote a computer program with a "long" integer variable for a big number:
long_integer_variable = 98765432l;

He should have written 98765432L instead to make it clear!!! (-_-;;;

It could be worse if it's combined with the logical OR symbol "|"...

-shin1ro

[Feba]

yudan: Yes, but if it's on a PC it's pretty obvious from context what it is :p

[AJBryant]

I hear people talk about the difficulty of 48 hiragana (48!!!!) and 48 katakana, meaning nearly a hundred characters before you even deal with kanji.

Well, think about this:

English does not just have 26 letters. There are 52. We have capitals and lowercase letters, and the forms are not always identical. Yeah, C looks like c, and S like s -- but to be fair, hiragana has り and katakana has リ. But compare A and a. And B and b. There's a reason kids confuse b, d, p, and g. Add to that the fact that we ALSO have 26 CURSIVE capitals and 26 lowercase cursive letters as well, we have a total of 104 letterforms that must be learned by students of English.

So which one is harder NOW?


Tony

[two_heads_talking]

Ummm... Finnish? oh no wait.. Navajo that's it. Navajo.

[hyperconjugated]

two_heads_talking wrote:
Ummm... Finnish? oh no wait.. Navajo that's it. Navajo.

Don't believe that myth, it's just a pyramid

[Denus]

AJBryant wrote:
we ALSO have 26 CURSIVE capitals and 26 lowercase cursive letters as well, we have a total of 104 letterforms that must be learned by students of English.

Cursive is mainly a written script, though. Doesn't Japanese have an equivalent?

[Shirasagi]

Denus wrote:

AJBryant wrote:
we ALSO have 26 CURSIVE capitals and 26 lowercase cursive letters as well, we have a total of 104 letterforms that must be learned by students of English.

Cursive is mainly a written script, though. Doesn't Japanese have an equivalent?

Yes and no. I believe Tony's point is that cursive is a separate letterform in English, specifically taught in schools. A printed "b" is quite distinct in how it's written compared to a cursive "b", and children practice the two. Or at least they did when I was in school. Japanese kids, AFAIK, are not taught a specific alternative cursive script for Japanese. Rather, those who take calligraphy classes learn how to write characters, in the same stroke order and form, but with a more flowing style, for example. And of course there are certain "calligraphic" shortcuts at even higher levels, but that's calligraphy, not standard writing. There are various shortcuts to writing kanji and kana that Japanese people pick up, but these are just floating in the cultural consciousness, akin to using one dash to cross double "t"s in English.

[Chris Hart]

AJBryant wrote:
I hear people talk about the difficulty of 48 hiragana (48!!!!) and 48 katakana, meaning nearly a hundred characters before you even deal with kanji.

Well, think about this:

English does not just have 26 letters. There are 52. We have capitals and lowercase letters, and the forms are not always identical. Yeah, C looks like c, and S like s -- but to be fair, hiragana has り and katakana has リ. But compare A and a. And B and b. There's a reason kids confuse b, d, p, and g. Add to that the fact that we ALSO have 26 CURSIVE capitals and 26 lowercase cursive letters as well, we have a total of 104 letterforms that must be learned by students of English.

So which one is harder NOW?


Tony

Tony -
We have more than that, when you add in computer displayed or printed info, which everyone deals with at one time or another.This is especially true for lower case letters. Just with a basic block font, for example the lowercase a we have the version this site uses, with the little flag on top, or the circle with the line on the right side, the same height as the circle. I have also seen many variations on charecters with a decender, (g,j...) to accomodate display issues on several devices. Also, if you look at serif vs sans-serif fonts, you will see even more variations. In sans-serif fonts, you can have some glyphs look exactly the same as others (lowercase L and capital I for example) while the serif fonts will show the difference by having a little tail at both sides at the top of the capital I, while the lowercase L will only have it on the left.

If you also look at people getting fancy, there are the Olde English scripts to look at as well, and you have additional varients of every letter in both cases. (Commonly used for engraving, invitations, official documents (diplomas, professional certifications...))

[dmizer]

Feba wrote:Who actually uses a | in day to day speech though?

I use it daily as a computer programmer and technical writer. Though I realize I'm a rare case.

Feba wrote:and 1 and I are easily to tell apart, since 1 is hardly ever written alone (and when it is, it's almost always 'one')

It used to be on the old manual typewriters that there was no number 1 key: [typewriter pic] At that time, it was necessary to use a capital I to make the number one. If they were considered close enough to be used interchangeably on a type writer, it doesn't take much of a leap to realize that they can easily be confused. Context is one thing, but there are plenty of situations where it really isn't clear. Just like the difference between O and 0.

[Feba]

I use it daily as a computer programmer and technical writer.

which isn't communicating with anyone.

[Shirasagi]

Feba wrote:

I use it daily as a computer programmer and technical writer.

which isn't communicating with anyone.

Except other computer programmers and the people reading his technical articles/manuals.