[Game] Umineko no Naku Koro ni - Translation Project

[OBrasilo]

Originally Posted by zorahk

Define proficient. I doubt after one year you are what I would call proficient. Can you read a similar amount of kanji to a native speaker? Do you have no problems discussing a wide range of topics, reading books, or writing essays? Can you navigate your way in Japan by reading signs and such?

Japanese is not an easy language, and one year of study is not going to give you a meaningful grasp of the language.

Unless you can read and write (though write is not that important anymore with the advent of computers) the same amount of kanji as a native speaker, your Japanese ability is not "proficient" by any standard. As Klash said, reading Japanese with only kana is like getting a root canal with no painkillers. I was once tutoring a Japanese friend in English, and she had to write an essay. I told her to write down some of her thoughts for what she wanted to write about in Japanese first so we could discuss them. She wrote them almost all in Hiragana. I told her to come back later when she had learned her own language before she decided to study another one, because quite frankly I said "I can't read this"

People who advocate the removal of Kanji from Japanese and the writing of Japanese in either full-kana or romanized text have obviously never tried to read those texts. It's almost impossible to read kana or romaji text with any great degree of speed or accuracy, to the point where I refuse to read anything written that way. Basically, as long as the kanji are common enough that people can read and understand them, the more kanji you have the easier it is to read, until you get past that point and the kanji are too rare or obscure to be read. Granted though, some things which are considered hard to read really aren't, it's just people being stupid.

At any rate, I don't expect people to be able to write 薔薇 from memory or be able to count 鎧 with a proper counter (which by the way is １領、２領 etc), but I DO expect anyone who claims they can speak Japanese well to at least be able to read and write proficiently.

Also, if it wasn't for the post WWII spelling reforms, kana would be much harder than it is today. Consider yourselves lucky. Kana orthography used to make little or no sense whatsoever. There's no difference in pronunciation of ゐる and いる, but they're different words and are spelt differently. Don't get me started on the usage of じ　ぢ　ず　づ

I don't get it why most Japanese speakers maintain Japanese is incomprehensible unless written in Kanji. In my opinion, that's false because were it true, spoken Japanese would have pretty much died a long time ago already, as it would mean spoken Japanese is impossible to understand. Yet people in Japan still to this date speak Japanese in their day to day life.
Obviously the spoken language has a way to distinguish between (quasi-)homophones. It's pitch accent. So make a writing system for Japanese that notates not only the basic morae (not syllables, contrary to popular belief) that kana notate, but also also the pitch accent, and add spaces to it, and you have a good writing system for Japanese that doesn't require thousands of characters to be read properly.
Phonetic simplicity doesn't require thousands of characters to be written properly. Case in point, Hawaiian language, which arguably has even less sounds than Japanese, yet it's perfectly understandable when written in the alphabetic Latin script.

As for people claiming that any writing system apart from the current one would make Japanese somehow un-Japanese... once again false. Do people even realize that the kanji were taken from Chinese? They're even called, literally han characters which means Chinese characters. Not that the Latin script was invented for English, not at all, just the same, it was invented for Latin, from the Greek script.
A writing system shouldn't be a founding pillar of one's culture or language. Look at Romanian. It used to be written in an extremely odd variant of Cyrillic, with lots of unique characters, then one day it was changed to Latin script, but do you think the Romanian culture and laguage became any less Romanian becuase of that? No, not at all.
Just like Korean didn't become any less Korean when it switched from hanja (the Korean equivalent of kanji) to their own phonetic-cluster hangeul writing system.

My question is, why don't the Japanese for once look at Korea and see how the Korean language was able to drop hanja and develop its own hangeul, and do something similar in Japanese as well? After all, the switch from hanja to hangeul increased literacy in Korea a lot, so it'd be just logical to assume that a switch from kanji+kana to a new, easier writing system would increase literacy in Japan as well.
And if the new system spaces the words and notates things like pitch accent, and other things that disambiguate words in spoken Japanese, then understandability wouldn't be a problem at all.

Edit: And yes I have tried to read kana-only Japanese text, and it's pretty much easier for me to parse only kana, than it is to figure out which kanji in a group of 5 or so kanji belong to one word, and which belong to the next word.
And I have tried to read hangeul-only Korean text (pretty much standard in Korean today), and again, it was pretty easy to read and understand it. And the little knowledge I have of Mandarin Chinese enables me to understand some sentences written in Pinyin pretty fine as well. Not something I would say for the native hanzi, though.

[Madman6510]

Because a country isn't going to restructure their entire writing system just to make it easier for foreigners to understand. It would be a much better use of their time to learn English for communicating with foreigners, and the ones who are expected to already do so.

If someone suggested that English be reorganized to make the alphabet much, much easier to pronounce words, and created a really efficient system, would we use it? No, because what we have works fine and we're already using it.

[moichispa]

I'm the only one who thinks this conversation has gone too far. I'm not saying that it is not interesting because it is but it is no longer related to umineko at all. Maybe we should move it to a better place. There is a thread to talk about Japanese language in general almost for sure and maybe one for Japanese in Visual novels.

[Madman6510]

Agreed.

So, um, how about that Umineko, eh?

[st_nick5]

Agreed, let's get back to discussing Umineko. I got a question about the PS3 Chiru adaptations, but I don't want to go to the thread in case there are spoilers for episode 8 in there, so I'll just ask in here. Amiami has four different versions of the game listed, could anyone tell me what the differences are?

http://www.amiami.jp/shop/?set=engli...e_display.html
http://www.amiami.jp/shop/?set=engli...e_display.html
http://www.amiami.jp/shop/?set=engli...e_display.html
http://www.amiami.jp/shop/?set=engli...e_display.html

[zorahk]

Your logic is faulty on multiple levels, but basically the spoken language has nothing to do with the written language. Japanese could not write before Chinese was imported into Japan, and yet the Japanese language existed beforehand.

Your suggestion for a new writing system based on mora and pitch accent, while on paper a good idea, is in practice a terrible idea. Most speakers of Japanese have no idea what pitch accent is. It's one of those phrases probably invented by some foreigner studying Japanese. You're under the mistaken assumption that we know what the pitch accent for a particular word is. If I saw hashi or something that I know it would be different from hashi. That's not the case. We do not know the word from the pitch accent. We know the pitch accent from the word. The rest is mostly gleaned from context. Pitch accent differs from dialect to dialect so attempting to standardize it is impossible anyway. Proper pitch accent is, literally, something that only exists on TV (EG: NHK). It doesn't exist in real life.

The example of korean is nice, but korean is not Japanese. Also, there are some studies which if you take the time to read show that reading mixed script (hanja + hangul) is actually faster than hangul only script.

Your entire point is pretty much invalidated by the fact that you apparently don't understand Kanji very well as you said in the last paragraph.

Basically, the only people who advocate the removal of kanji from Japanese are whiny foreigners who complain that its too hard to learn. It's not designed for you, I'm afraid.

Originally Posted by OBrasilo

I don't get it why most Japanese speakers maintain Japanese is incomprehensible unless written in Kanji. In my opinion, that's false because were it true, spoken Japanese would have pretty much died a long time ago already, as it would mean spoken Japanese is impossible to understand. Yet people in Japan still to this date speak Japanese in their day to day life.
Obviously the spoken language has a way to distinguish between (quasi-)homophones. It's pitch accent. So make a writing system for Japanese that notates not only the basic morae (not syllables, contrary to popular belief) that kana notate, but also also the pitch accent, and add spaces to it, and you have a good writing system for Japanese that doesn't require thousands of characters to be read properly.
Phonetic simplicity doesn't require thousands of characters to be written properly. Case in point, Hawaiian language, which arguably has even less sounds than Japanese, yet it's perfectly understandable when written in the alphabetic Latin script.

As for people claiming that any writing system apart from the current one would make Japanese somehow un-Japanese... once again false. Do people even realize that the kanji were taken from Chinese? They're even called, literally han characters which means Chinese characters. Not that the Latin script was invented for English, not at all, just the same, it was invented for Latin, from the Greek script.
A writing system shouldn't be a founding pillar of one's culture or language. Look at Romanian. It used to be written in an extremely odd variant of Cyrillic, with lots of unique characters, then one day it was changed to Latin script, but do you think the Romanian culture and laguage became any less Romanian becuase of that? No, not at all.
Just like Korean didn't become any less Korean when it switched from hanja (the Korean equivalent of kanji) to their own phonetic-cluster hangeul writing system.

My question is, why don't the Japanese for once look at Korea and see how the Korean language was able to drop hanja and develop its own hangeul, and do something similar in Japanese as well? After all, the switch from hanja to hangeul increased literacy in Korea a lot, so it'd be just logical to assume that a switch from kanji+kana to a new, easier writing system would increase literacy in Japan as well.
And if the new system spaces the words and notates things like pitch accent, and other things that disambiguate words in spoken Japanese, then understandability wouldn't be a problem at all.

Edit: And yes I have tried to read kana-only Japanese text, and it's pretty much easier for me to parse only kana, than it is to figure out which kanji in a group of 5 or so kanji belong to one word, and which belong to the next word.
And I have tried to read hangeul-only Korean text (pretty much standard in Korean today), and again, it was pretty easy to read and understand it. And the little knowledge I have of Mandarin Chinese enables me to understand some sentences written in Pinyin pretty fine as well. Not something I would say for the native hanzi, though.

[Frisko]

At what age does a typical Japanese person need to be to know how to look up an unknown kanji (or sequence of kanji) in a dictionary? As long as its reasonably close to the age speakers of other languages need to be to look up words, then Japanese is fine. On the other hand if it's significantly higher then there is either something wrong with the Japanese language and/or the education system.

[xBTAx]

Originally Posted by st_nick5

Agreed, let's get back to discussing Umineko. I got a question about the PS3 Chiru adaptations, but I don't want to go to the thread in case there are spoilers for episode 8 in there, so I'll just ask in here. Amiami has four different versions of the game listed, could anyone tell me what the differences are?

http://www.amiami.jp/shop/?set=engli...e_display.html
http://www.amiami.jp/shop/?set=engli...e_display.html
http://www.amiami.jp/shop/?set=engli...e_display.html
http://www.amiami.jp/shop/?set=engli...e_display.html

Generally when AmiAmi has 4 versions of something, it's the RE, RE with AmiAmi bonus, LE, and then LE with AmiAmi bonus. That seems to be the case here (except your 3rd link is LE with bonus and the 4th link is just the LE). The AmiAmi bonus seems to be a "bookstore card", which I'm guessing is like a phone card? And I looked around for you, but I couldn't find any info on what the LE contains.

[OBrasilo]

Originally Posted by zorahk

Your logic is faulty on multiple levels, but basically the spoken language has nothing to do with the written language. Japanese could not write before Chinese was imported into Japan, and yet the Japanese language existed beforehand.

That's true. Point taken.

Your suggestion for a new writing system based on mora and pitch accent, while on paper a good idea, is in practice a terrible idea. Most speakers of Japanese have no idea what pitch accent is. It's one of those phrases probably invented by some foreigner studying Japanese. You're under the mistaken assumption that we know what the pitch accent for a particular word is. If I saw hashi or something that I know it would be different from hashi. That's not the case. We do not know the word from the pitch accent. We know the pitch accent from the word. The rest is mostly gleaned from context. Pitch accent differs from dialect to dialect so attempting to standardize it is impossible anyway. Proper pitch accent is, literally, something that only exists on TV (EG: NHK). It doesn't exist in real life.

Why not just adapt hangeul, modify it to suit Japanese phonology, and add pitch accent etc. markers to it to help disambiguate the words. Voilà, you have a writing system which is much easier to learn and read, for foreigners and native speakers alive, but at the same time fits well in the tradition of eg. vertical writing, etc., as it will be just as "blocky" as the current system is.

The example of korean is nice, but korean is not Japanese. Also, there are some studies which if you take the time to read show that reading mixed script (hanja + hangul) is actually faster than hangul only script.

Maybe, but the mixed script is certainly much more difficult to learn, for the exact reason that it contains hanja. And this is most likely the reason why it has pretty much died by now.
And BTW, there's a theory with increasing support, according to which both Korean and Japanese might be related to each other via a third language named Goguryeo. Which would make them related languages.

Your entire point is pretty much invalidated by the fact that you apparently don't understand Kanji very well as you said in the last paragraph.

Maybe I don't understand Kanji very well, but I have at least a basic understanding of linguistics. And I am familiar with quite a few writing systems, namely Latin (more than one variant), Cyrillic (more than one variant), Greek, hangeul, and kana. And am in the process of familiarizing myself with kanji.

Basically, the only people who advocate the removal of kanji from Japanese are whiny foreigners who complain that its too hard to learn. It's not designed for you, I'm afraid.

Listen... my opinion remains that kanji are a major hindrance to the language, because it takes 8 or so years for a normal school child in Japan to master it properly. In comparison, school children in France master the French Latin script much earlier.
Just to show you my point. By the time I was 11, I had read adult novels such as Jurassic Park and The Lost World by Michael Crichton, as well as a research book about the RMS Titanic.
Now ask yourself, would an average Japanese speaker aged 10-11 be able to read adult books of that level? I'd say no, because he wouldn't know all the kanji.
Now please explain, if an 11 year old from anywhere in the Americas or Europe can read adult literature fine while one from Japan can't because of the kanji, how are kanji not a hidrance to the native speakers themselves?

[Madman6510]

Guys - stop arguing. This isn't the thread for it and it's completely off topic.

If it continues, Klash is just going to come in here and delete all the irrelevant posts like he did with the literature discussion a few months ago.

[zorahk]

Maybe, but the mixed script is certainly much more difficult to learn, for the exact reason that it contains hanja. And this is most likely the reason why it has pretty much died by now.
And BTW, there's a theory with increasing support, according to which both Korean and Japanese might be related to each other via a third language named Goguryeo. Which would make them related languages.

I know the theory, and Japanese probably is related to one of the languages of the korean kingdoms. However, even if it was, that doesn't make it related to modern korean because linguistic analysis has shown that modern korean is not related to goguryeo.

[lovelysan]

Originally Posted by Madman6510

Guys - stop arguing. This isn't the thread for it and it's completely off topic.

If it continues, Klash is just going to come in here and delete all the irrelevant posts like he did with the literature discussion a few months ago.

One can only hope.

[zorahk]

Originally Posted by lovelysan

One can only hope.

Because there's so much else to discuss in this thread, you know, since the translation is done and all.

oh wait.

[UsagiTenpura]

Originally Posted by Klashikari

This thread has been created in order to leave announcements and various updates related to the ongoing translation project for Umineko no Naku Koro ni done by "The Witch Hunt".

Please use this thread to check the news, but also leave feedbacks, comments, and such.

I think this is pretty clear.
The whole learning japanese thread is probably something that should be done in private message, but I remember seeing a board about learning japanese elsewhere on animesuki... too bad I can't find it now.

[CainSonozaki]

Originally Posted by zorahk

Because there's so much else to discuss in this thread, you know, since the translation is done and all.

oh wait.

Yes how dare Witch Hunt act like normal human beings with normal human lives instead of the fully automated Japanese translating and editing robots. How dare people we dont know and dont pay not give us what we want when we want.

[st_nick5]

Originally Posted by CainSonozaki

Yes how dare Witch Hunt act like normal human beings with normal human lives instead of the fully automated Japanese translating and editing robots. How dare people we dont know and dont pay not give us what we want when we want.

I think he's more getting at that there's not much else to talk about for the time being, until the patch is released.

[Joachim13]

I suppose this is the proper place to ask, but where did the 'furniture' term come from? I've never heard of it before Umineko, so is that a culture thing, or just a random type of deal?

[Cao Ni Ma]

Originally Posted by Joachim13

I suppose this is the proper place to ask, but where did the 'furniture' term come from? I've never heard of it before Umineko, so is that a culture thing, or just a random type of deal?

Im pretty sure RK07 took it from a description by Carr of how proper servants should act in a mystery novel. I remember reading it about it once in an essay and then RK07 pretty much confirmed it in one of his interviews with Keiya

[rogerpepitone]

In Soylent Green, some of the characters were referred to as furniture.

[zorahk]

Originally Posted by st_nick5

I think he's more getting at that there's not much else to talk about for the time being, until the patch is released.

this, times a million.