Re:If English was written like Chinese (1999)
by latentsea on Monday June 03, 2024 @09:55PM
(#40569938)
Yes, so basically the arguments around lack of Kanji leading to worse readability are actually hitting upon the fact that readability suffers short-term not because Kanji enhances readability,but because they're simply not used to processing the language only through kana, and that were they to acclimatize to that, it becomes readable again and in fact easier to read than before.
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Re:If English was written like Chinese (1999)
by pcwalton on Monday June 03, 2024 @09:58PM
(#40569955)
I do wonder whether kana might be slightly easier to read if ん were written as part of the preceding syllable like it is in hangul.
Re:If English was written like Chinese (1999)
by latentsea on Tuesday June 04, 2024 @02:18AM
(#40571250)
Kana would be slightly easier to read if we spent as much time reading in Kana as we have in Kanji.
Hangul has some funny rules around patchim that need to be memorized. Kana does a great job avoiding this, so on balance kana is probably just fine compared to Hangul.
Re:If English was written like Chinese (1999)
by mmis1000 on Tuesday June 04, 2024 @11:52AM
(#40575858)
I don't think so. Kana just don't have enough entropy compares to Kanji. A kanji can be compose with up to twenty strokes with high variety of stroke patterns. Those excessive complexity make it identifiable even in extreme situations. (Blurry or tainted or whatever situation). In some case, a kanji with half of its size masked still be decoded without any ambiguity. But this will never work with an voice based language.