question about chinese characters

Yeah, you just pick any characters that approximate the sound. No real rule. But with Korean and Japanese names, you just use the characters as they are written.

 

Good question!

I'm just wondering, how do they spell Ruud van Nistelroy or Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink or Edwin van der Sar in Chinese? These are much longer than Chinese names! It's kinda funny because each character means something...

Thankfully, our ancestors have developed katakana to write foreign words and names. But one of the drawbacks of the Japanese language is the complicated writing system that jumbles up Kanji, hiragana, katakana, alphabets and numbers. It would look like a cipher, rather than a language, to anyone from other countries...

 

Re: Good question!

The same way that one writes Chinese names in English.

How are proper Chinese, Korean or Arabic names written in Japanese?

In written Chinese, sometimes special puncuation marks are used to denote proper names. The only "rule" is that characters are chosen so they don't mean anything together, or at least nothing offensive.

 

Re: Good question!

I know what you mean by this. Although I can stumble through basic Japanese conversation, the writing confounds me.

First, there are Kanji combinations are pronounced a certain way, and it is true only in that particular combination. For example, Kobe is "god" and "door." But it doesn't necessarily mean "god" is ever pronounced "ko" and "door" is ever pronounced "be" anywhere else in the language. Yamato is another example. So is Sagami.

Also, it is very confusing how on-yomi (eum in Korean) and kun-yomi (hun, Korean) is mixed together. So, for a given kanji character, it can be pronounced, at the very least, two different ways. Many times, there are five or six different pronunciations.

Even native speakers have problems sometimes. One time, my mother-in-law (who is Japanese) suggested that my wife and I take a trip to Shiroma (White horse). It was supposedly a beautiful town to visit. It turned out that the correct pronunciation is Hakuba. Actually, it could also have been Hakuma or Shiroba.

I may be biased, but I feel the Korean usage of Chinese characters is a bit more orderly. Chinese characters are almost always read in on-yomi (eum bal eum), and aboriginal Korean words are written in Hangeul. There are a few characters with alternate pronunciations, such as "gold" (kim or keum) or "turtle" (ku or kui), most of the time, there is little doubt as to how to pronounce something. For most of the commonly used word that originate from Chinese characters, Hangeul is used.

I found it curious how Hiragana is written in very small text next to complex Kanji, as a pronunciation guide. It seems like a symptom of an unnecessarily complex (in my opinion) writing system.

 

Yeah, I agree w/ Hyok, kun & on yomi is so damn arbitrary and confuses the hell outta me (and many of my Japanese friends).

BTW, in Korean, is everything in Hangul? Can you basically "get away" with not learning or reading any Chinese characters?

As for nw's question, you'll usually see non-Japanese names written in Katakana, the script used for "non Japanese" words, but for Korean and Chinese names, they'll often just use the Chinese characters straight out and then write in little script above it the pronunciation in Katakana but for more recognized or famous names, they won't even bother with that, because you're supposed to already know it's a Korean or Chinese name and know how it's supposed to be pronounced.

 

They experimented with that a few years ago and it backfired. There is too much existing written material with Chinese characters that one cannot get away with not learning some. They were having grownups who had trouble understanding everything in a newspaper. I think high school students today are required to learn 2000 characters. It is a bit easier than what Japanese students have to go through, because they just have to learn the on-yomi (usually there is only one) and the meaning.

 

I see. That makes sense. I know some critics of the Japanese lang. say they should do away with Kanji, but that's just crazy talk, in my opin., there's too many homonyms for it to be feasible.

 

But can Katakana cope with every language in existence? Like the click sounds of some African languages? That's why I threw in Arabic. I can't read Japanese, so I may be totally off base. What I'm trying to get at is, is Katakana designed for certain languages in particular (like English because there is more exposure to it?)

 

Katakana is used for all foreign words, not just words from the English language. If the sounds do not exist in Japanese they do the best they can. McDonald's Hamburger is Makudonudou Hanbaagaa. Flannigan is Furanigan, and so on.
Japanese who live abroad for any length of time, like Yoko Ono or Seiji Ozawa, return to find that their names are spelled with katakana, as if they became foreign during their absence. Their names are also inverted in the western way, with family name last.
Literate Japanese must know the on yomi as well as the kun yomi. Nelson's Kanji dictionary has a disclaimer on the back that the gigantic volume only includes the 70,000 most common readings.
The little hiragana notes you see next to kanki are called furigana. These are crib sheets for people (most people) who "only" know 50,000-80,000 readings. If you look at old Japanese newspapers there are tons of them.
After the war, the occupation forces planned to convert Japanese to the roman alphabet. Japanese can be written perfectly using 19 out of the 26 Roman letters and two diacritical marks, but it reads like hell. The Japanese protested, and compromise was struck; publications would use 1840 "joyo" kanji and try not to use the rest of the characters. The Monbushou later increated this to 2080. Japanese children learn all the readings for these characters about 150 per school year. Advertising often uses katakana when it should not be used to get attention and give a foreign feel to the product.
North Korea went to an all hangul system in the seventies. South Korea tried it but is sticking with hangul and kanji for the moment. Hangul was brilliantly conceived in the Court of King Sejong and it one of the best writing systems in the world, tailor made for Korean. Japanese is an insane mismatch of katakana, hiragana, romaji and Chinese characters. Japanese sentences also have no spaces in between words, and can be written vertically or horizontally. During the war, newspapers printed sentences backwards, or right to lieft, like in Chinese.

 

With Hangul, honestly speaking, we do not need Hanja (kanji) at all. In fact, with Hangul we can write virtually every language in the World and even sounds that does not exist in real life vocabuary. Hangul's system is so well designed that with slight modifications it could describe virtually any sound possible. One English linguist scholar acclaimed Hangul to be 'one of the most important invention the mankind ever foresaw'. If you are interested try googling in the internet.

 

Exactly. For example, in Japanese, there is no equivalent for the "-d" at the end of "Poland". So instead, you replace "-d" with "-do" and you end up with "Porando", which rhymes with Japanese for "Orlando".

The same with the "th" sound in English - "Third" becomes "Saado".

 

An Extract from Britanica Encyclopedia:

 

"Katakana is used for all foreign words, not just words from the English language. If the sounds do not exist in Japanese they do the best they can. McDonald's Hamburger is Makudonudou Hanbaagaa. Flannigan is Furanigan, and so on.
Japanese who live abroad for any length of time, like Yoko Ono or Seiji Ozawa, return to find that their names are spelled with katakana, as if they became foreign during their absence. Their names are also inverted in the western way, with family name last"

What I don't understand, (as I am currently learing Japanese) is if Katakana and Hiragana have essentially the same sounds by each character, why is there the need for two alphabets? In other words, why can’t Hiragana be used to write Tepu Rekoda, Biru, or Makudonudou Hanbaagaa , for example? My tacher was unable to give me an explanation other than Hiragana is used for foreign words.

 

I am an enthusiast in Hangul and I teach English in my part-time so I guess I have some linguist in me.

One time, I taught one Singaporean friend how to read and write Hangul since he was so keen to learn it. It only took one hour or so before he fully memorised and understood the 24-letter script; he was able to at least read and write Korean words without even understanding what it meant.

What is so speacial about this script is that instead of gradual development this script was intended to be an intellectual invention to meet the needs of the people, which it excelled in doing so.

If you are a bit of a linguist and enjoy logic I recommend following website:

http://www.sigmainstitute.com/koreanonline/hangul_history.shtml

Good luck!

 

What katakana does is show emphasis and set a word apart from the rest of the sentence.
So what it does is, since foreign words don't always go with the flow of natural Japanese writing, having a word in katakana sort of acts as an advance warning, to let the reader know that a 'special' word is coming up.

But that's just what I've been told.

BTW, katakana is also used for general emphasis and to denote sound effects.

 

Hangul may be used to write Japanese perfectly. If the relations between two countries are better I hope they can take up the script and give it a try. I am serious about this - thinking only of efficiency this really works; thinking of ego that is another issue.

 

This is not exactly true. There is no "z" in Korean, nor is there "tsu" unless it is in the middle of a word. There are many sounds in English that cannot be duplicated in Hangeul. Like the Japanese did with Katakans, like using a "te" and a small "i" to produce "ti" (since there is no "ti" in Japanese, instead it changes to "chi"), I'm sure Hangeul can be modified similarly. But the option does not exist at the moment.

Also, let's dispell the notion that Hangeul was created by Sejong because he loved the people and wanted to create an easier system. Sejong was a Sinophile, and he was keenly interested in being able to faithfully reproduce the original Chinese pronunciations of Hanja.

In addition, Korea was heavily influenced by Buddhism, and many Sanskrit words could not be accurately written so as to reproduce the original sound.

Therefore, Sejong assigned a group of scholars an ambitious quest to create an alphabet capable of reproducing Chinese, Sanskrit and Korean phonetics. If you look at the original set of consonants and vowels, there are all kinds of odd symbols such as triangles, that later came to be eliminated when Hangeul was adopted mainly for Korean. If you look at an Okpyeon (Hanja dictionary) there are often Hangeul pronunciation guides to reproduce the original Chinese. You will see really odd symbols and strange vowel combinations that do not exist in Korean.

Sejong was a great king with a kind heart. But it really is not that it was his love of the kingdom that led him to create Hangeul, but his admiration of Chinese and Buddhist cultures. He supposedly wept for several days upon hearing the news that the Chinese emperor died. Not exactly what nationalist Koreans want to hear, but a historical fact.

 

Sometimes Chinese characters are chosen so that they sound like the original word and also means something. The Chinese version of Coca Cola is something like "It's tasty and you can enjoy it!" I find it very interesting because we can't do it in Japanese.

Yes, theoretically, katakana can "translate" any language, but the limitation is clear. The Japanese language has only 5 vowels. It is impossible to exactly copy the original pronunciation. There is no way to write German syllables with umlauts, for example. Now we can convert "v" in English into katakana, but we still can't do anything for "th" sounds. No distinction between r's and l's. The only language that we can easily pronounce is Italian.

As for Korean names in Japanese, we are doing our best. Kim Il Sung is Kim Il Sung. It's not on-yomi-based "Kin Nissei" anymore. The Korean and Japanese media have made agreements on pronunciation rules. There is no such agreement between China and Japan, though. Mao Zedong is "Mo Takuto" in Japan. I assume that Prime Minister Koizumi is pronounced differently in China. In the football world, however, Chinese names are often spelled in katakana or alphabets in addition to Kanji so that they can be pronouned Qu Bo, Sun Jihai, and so on.

I agree that the Japanese writing system is unnecessarily complex and that Hangul is an excellent invention, but I don't think we can change the current system. We can't do away with Kanji because it is the most impotant component of the language. If we write everything in hiragana and katakana, that would be very hard to read, even if we put spaces in between words. Reading would be so slow!!! Hiragana grammatically connects Kanji characters. Katakana is suitable for foreign words. Also, Hiragana is somewhat "softer" than Kanji and katakana and suitable for ancient Japanese words. Katakana often adds "machine-like" sound effects to the words. Most of the vocabulary is Kanji, but if we intentionally use hiragana, katakana or even alphabets instead, that would give a different impression to the reader.

 

I believe it was Kin Ichisei, the "Il" in his name meaning "one." His son, Kim Jongil, his "Il" means "sun," therefore "ni" would be correct.

I hear this a lot from Japanese, including my wife. I think Japanese just assume this, not knowing another way. A phonetic alphabet, in the learning stages, requires a mental process of sounding out letters and interpreting the meaning. But after one becomes proficient, I don't think it makes a difference.

Think of the first time you saw the movie, "The Shining." The first time that the word "redrum" is reflected on the mirror, one does not slowly pronounce "murder." The recognition of the word is immediate. I believe the same thing would happen if Hiragana was used more extensively.

Sure, the first time you see a sign in Hiragana, "kinen" on the wall, you might have to think before realizing it means "no smoking." But once you get used to it, I doubt you'll miss the Kanji. That is exactly what happened in Korea. I doubt that an old person used to Chinese characters can read a text written with Hanja mixed in any faster than a young person reading a newspaper with a lot of Hangeul.

Just my take. I still haven't convinced my wife, so I won't be surprised if you guys disagree!

 

This is a fascinating subject.

It's interesting to see that Chinese characters are part of the Japanese and Korean writing system.

My highschool Japanese teacher once told me that if she were to pick up and read a Chinese newspaper, she would understand about 70% of all the characters. That's pretty amazing considering that one normally needs to recognize about 3000-4000 characters in order to read a Chinese newspaper.

Of course, the Chinese writing system is unnecessarily complex (13000+ characters in use today). This makes learning an excruciating experience, and it is inefficient in comparison with alphabet-based languages such as English and French. Since Chinese words are generally composed of two characters, one needs to know a few thousands characters in order to understand most of the words. On the other hand, one needs to recognize only 26 English alphabets to understand all English words.

LP, in Chinese the word 'Coca' in Coca Cola means 'tasty'. So a layer of meaning is already 'built-in'. Many commercial products have their names deliberately chosen to sound similar to the English counterpart, yet the names also have meanings that describe the products. For example, Sony in Chinese is 'xin li' (meaning New Force), BMW is 'bao ma' (treasured horse), etc.

Japanese and Korean names, whether people or places, are pronounced as their Chinese characters would indicate. For instance, Koizumi (as in prime minister Koizumi) would be pronounced 'xiao chuan' in Mandarin, 'siu chuun' in Cantonese, which literal meaning is 'little fountain'. Seoul (Korea's capital) is pronouced 'Han chen' in Mandarin, 'Hon zhing' in Cantonese, which literally means 'Han city'.

 

Of course it would make sense, in a western way of thinking, to have one writing sytem, such as hiragana, used for all words. Japan's insistence on a different system for foreign words shows you a bit about the Japanese way of looking at things.
There is no chance that hangul will be adopted in Japan. Japanese tend to look down on Korean culture and would not stand for this.
Japan should keep its writing system, perhaps with some fine tuning here and there. Converting to all hiragana would be a terrible idea. Sure, you could do it. Genji Monogotari (Tales of Genji), one of the great classics in Japanese literature, was written in hiragana. But it is an exhausting task to read Japanese in hiragana. Kanji work much better.
Alphabets are important. The Treaty Of Pecs dictated that Serbs use the Cyrillic alphabet and Croats the Roman alphabet. How many millions of people have been killed in part because of this decision?