Jun. 12th, 2006
if only they had taken more care...
Jun. 12th, 2006 03:00 pmI'm having a bit of trouble now with when to use 上がる/上る(あがる) and 上る(のぼる). You know, when I say that Japanese is one of the easiest languages to learn... I guess I really did mean at the earliest stages only, and only when you're working from a set list of vocabulary/kanji that doesn't play crazy identity games on you. And it's all kanji's fault! If only the Japanese would have taken more care when they adopted kanji, rather than letting us end up with multiple readings for every kanji/kanji compound and multiple kanji/kanji compounds for every word...
漢字が好きでも嫌いでもあります
Jun. 12th, 2006 11:10 pmOh man, sometimes I just have to say:
Fuck you Japanese...
If anyone wants an idea of what I'm talking about who doesn't already, here's a Wikipedia article on kanji for you. Or if you just want a taste:
In a number of cases, multiple kanji were assigned to cover a single Japanese word. Typically when this occurs, the different kanji refer to specific shades of meaning. For instance, the word なおす, naosu, when written 治す, means "to heal an illness or sickness". When written 直す it means "to fix or correct something" (e.g. a bicycle or a poorly written Wikipedia article). Sometimes the differences are very clear; other times they are quite subtle. Sometimes there are differences of opinion among reference works -- one dictionary may say the kanji are equivalent, while another dictionary may draw distinctions of use. Because of this confusion, Japanese people may have trouble knowing which kanji to use. One workaround is simply to write the word in hiragana, a method frequently employed with more complex cases such as もと moto, which has at least five different kanji, 元, 基, 本, 下, 素, three of which have only very subtle differences.
Why did my language passion have to be this language?
Fuck you Japanese...
If anyone wants an idea of what I'm talking about who doesn't already, here's a Wikipedia article on kanji for you. Or if you just want a taste:
In a number of cases, multiple kanji were assigned to cover a single Japanese word. Typically when this occurs, the different kanji refer to specific shades of meaning. For instance, the word なおす, naosu, when written 治す, means "to heal an illness or sickness". When written 直す it means "to fix or correct something" (e.g. a bicycle or a poorly written Wikipedia article). Sometimes the differences are very clear; other times they are quite subtle. Sometimes there are differences of opinion among reference works -- one dictionary may say the kanji are equivalent, while another dictionary may draw distinctions of use. Because of this confusion, Japanese people may have trouble knowing which kanji to use. One workaround is simply to write the word in hiragana, a method frequently employed with more complex cases such as もと moto, which has at least five different kanji, 元, 基, 本, 下, 素, three of which have only very subtle differences.
Why did my language passion have to be this language?