Watching 「海月姫」 (
Kuragehime,
Princess Jellyfish) does remind me of one thing: the infernal cussedness of the Japanese language.
Check it: 海月, pronounced "kurage". Main character: 月海, pronounced "tsukimi". (A combination my IME doesn't bother to present, by the way.) Perfectly normal, you say. Of course kanji have more than one reading, some of them used only in names.
But no! This is not the case in Chinese, where the vast majority of hanzi have only one reading, used in all situations. The written language is apparently
less ambiguous than English. That might not be a very high bar, but it's one that Japanese misses without even noticing. Totally ludicrous. Maybe, just maybe, if the Japanese had invented their own writing system rather than trying to bolt on something completely different, we wouldn't have this problem. (See also: Korea.) But then we'd still have had to go through the Edo period, when I'm informed the language changed to such an extent that it's like cockney rhyming slang becoming standard English.
Today's outrage: 明日, which I usually read as "ashita", probably because it always makes me think of the DDR announcer. But sometimes it's "asu", which is apparently more standard. Very irritating, especially when trying to do karaoke. (In some formal or archaic contexts it's "myounichi"? I've never seen that, although it's a plausible way to read it.)
words from chris, 2011-07-05 22:55:14, los angeles
