TRPG General Chat

2:00 PM

@Helwar I actually kind of have this problem where I learned Spanish when I was in school and I did a short japanese course when I was at university; I remember both of them awfully, and they kind of blended together in my head, so even when I am trying to remember spanish or japanese words both languages are springing to mind

Anaphory

@Carcer That's untrue. Any language native speakers throw out a lot. It's just that they don't notice, but for your L2, you do notice, and the rules according to which sounds are assimilated are different.

Rubiksmoose

@Helwar One you learn the sounds and the symbols assoicated with them, you could technically read Japanese perfectly (from hiragana). Understanding though, as always, is the true issue.

Helwar

@Carcer Also I would like to hear real people speaking real japanese. I feel like I've been exposed only to media and they "act" a lot and exagerate. I mean, I guess girls don't talk in that fake girlish accent all the time, and people in general doesn't put that much enfasis on the end of phrases

@Rubiksmoose I could do that a few years ago, during only one summer when I decided to learn hira/katakana. Then I promptly forgot, I just remember a few of the symbols

kviiri

@Helwar But anyway, if five genders feels like a lot, Swahili has around fifteen different noun classes, with the exact number depending on the dialect :>

Rubiksmoose

@Helwar In fact stress and emphasis are two things that Japanese does not use interestingly. It is a hard habit for English speakers at least to break.

Helwar

2:01 PM

Also I didn't even know what the heck was I saying so.... :P

Carcer

@Anaphory I'm almost certain I remember reading an analysis of a study which was comparing how much meaningful information is encoded per syllable in different languages, which included a conclusion that languages with more limited syllabaries were typically spoken at a faster rate to compensate

Anaphory

@kviiri Aren't they largely semantic, according to an animacy hierarchy, though?

@Carcer Okay, that would make sense.

kviiri

@Anaphory Yes, which makes it a lot easier. Although it takes a while to get on the same wavelength with the classes :)

Anaphory

@kviiri I can imagine.

kviiri

Eg. class 11 is for "extensions". At first I mainly associated it with long objects. Now I associate with things whose fundamental nature isn't altered by adding "More of the same" to it - eg. fences, ropes, porridge.

Yuuki

2:07 PM

@Rubiksmoose That's becoming less and less true these days, from what I hear.

Helwar

@kviiri I can hardly see the conection between ropes and porridge :P

Yuuki

My parents say that they used to be able to read Japanese newspapers effortlessly because they only used kanji.

But these days, the papers use more kana than kanji.

Rubiksmoose

@Yuuki Is it? I mean reading any news or games in Japanese requires it to a large extent as does any kind of navigation of Japanese cities. Maybe you are referring to larger uses of import words using katakana?

Carcer

@Yuuki I might be misunderstanding - I thought kanji were the hard part, and katakana/hiragana are the simple characters

Rubiksmoose

@Carcer Unless you were trained on Chinese, say, which uses largely the same characters.

(though pronunciations are very different, and meanings change as well)

Yuuki

2:11 PM

@Carcer I am Chinese.

Carcer

@Rubiksmoose Ah, okay, that's true

though I understand the meaning changes can be... interesting

I recall my japanese teacher telling us that certain kanji you would read in one language as "letter" is basically "toilet paper" in the other - the literal meaning of the characters being "hand paper", or something like that

Yuuki

@Rubiksmoose My understanding is that writing solely in kana is becoming more and more popular partly due to nationalist sentiment.

Since kanji is borrowed from Chinese.

Helwar

@Yuuki how weird, even if it's borrowed from chinese, they have a lot of history with it and they have made them their own thing

I mean, I don't know jack, but it feels weird

Rubiksmoose

@Yuuki Interesting. As much of a pain as it is to learn Kanji though. At least once you know them you can at least guess at the meaning. Writing in kana alone is almost unintelligible though....

(from a learner's POV)

Yuuki

@Rubiksmoose I imagine that it's partially xenophobic in nature as well since understanding kana alone requires more familiarity with the language since you need context clues.

So it makes things tougher on foreigners.

China, South Korea, and Japan all have this dual fascination with Western culture but also a strong undercurrent of xenophobia.

The byplay between these two characteristics is interesting to say the least.

Rubiksmoose

2:17 PM

Interesting indeed.

Helwar

Would'nt Kana be easier to understand??? I mean, it's a syllabary, you don't need to learn at least 3000 symbols to start to be able to read.... Once you know the sylabary you can read everything

Yuuki

@Helwar You might be able to read the sounds, but kana does not convey meaning.

Like Chinese pinyin.

Colin Gross

shi

shi is everywhere

Helwar

@Yuuki But... Kana makes words like our letters do

Carcer

@NautArch are you being serious at Fenrir

Helwar

2:18 PM

I don't completely understand this issue :P

Yuuki

Imagine having far more homophones than English does.

Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den

The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den (simplified Chinese: 施氏食狮史; traditional Chinese: 施氏食獅史; pinyin: Shī Shì shí shī shǐ; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: si sī si̍t sai sú; literally: "The Story of Mr. Shi Eating Lions") is a passage composed of 92 characters written in Classical Chinese by linguist and poet Yuen Ren Chao (1892–1982), in which every syllable has the sound shi when read in modern Mandarin Chinese, with only the tones differing. It is an example of a one-syllable article, a form of constrained writing possible in tonal languages such as Mandarin Chinese. == Text == 《施氏食獅史》石室詩士施氏，嗜獅，誓食十獅。氏時時適市視獅。...

Helwar

@Yuuki Oh, I see where you are going now

Yuuki

cc @ColinGross

Sir Cinnamon

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo." is a grammatically correct sentence in American English, often presented as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated linguistic constructs through lexical ambiguity. It has been discussed in literature in various forms since 1967, when it appeared in Dmitri Borgmann's Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought. The sentence employs three distinct meanings of the word buffalo: as a proper noun to refer to a specific place named Buffalo, the city of Buffalo, New York being the most notable...

kviiri

@Helwar Add a lump of porridge to a lump of porridge, you still have a single lump of porridge (albeit bigger). Lengthen a rope with some more rope, you still got one rope, just bigger.

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