NTT Do Co Mo is releasing a mobile phone aimed at the children’s market. One of the phone’s features is that users will be able to switch its screen-menu system from kanji to hiragana.
子どもが簡単に操作できるよう、メニューやガイドの難しい漢字をひらがなで表示することができます。
I wonder if similar features can be found on other electronic items in Japan. (Matt, any ideas?)
The phone is model SA800i.
The Institute of International Education has released its 2005 “Open Doors” report on U.S. students studying abroad.
The top twenty destinations for study abroad by U.S. students during the 2003-04 school year were, in declining order, Britain, Italy, Spain, France, Australia, Mexico, Germany, Ireland, China, Costa Rica, Japan, Austria, New Zealand, Cuba, Chile, Greece, the Czech Republic, South Africa, Russia, and the Netherlands.
Britain was by far the leader, with 32,237 U.S. students. China was ninth, with 4,737.
Fear of SARS resulted in numbers for parts of East Asia dropping off for the spring and summer of 2003, so the 90 percent increase for China is not so much a dramatic increase as a return to pre-crisis levels.
In 2003/04, overall U.S. study abroad in Asia (13,213) increased by 36%, with American student numbers in China exceeding pre-SARS levels (4,737, up 90%), and increases in students going to Japan, (3,707, up 7%), Korea (879, up 19%), Hong Kong (487, up 6%), and Taiwan (195, up 32%). However, even with all of these increases, only 7% of all Americans studying abroad selected Asia for their overseas academic experience.
I don’t know how those numbers are reached. Taiwan certainly has more than 192 Americans studying here. Perhaps the figures are related to official university-level study-abroad programs.
Nonetheless, the figures do represent an increase, especially for places such as China, where many are studying Mandarin. Indeed, being in an environment where the target language is spoken is especially important, given how many Mandarin-learning programs (in both the West and Asia) are badly imbalanced toward memorizing Chinese characters rather than learning the language itself. So environment is especially important for those wishing to learn Mandarin.
For what it’s worth, I’ve lived in both China and Taiwan, and I recommend Taiwan.
A recent article in a Japanese newspaper discusses the dominance of English in the world of science, specifically in Japan. It contains this telling anecdote:
Earlier this year, the Japan Society for Bioscience, Biotechnology and Agrochemistry revised the rules governing submission of papers to its Japanese-language journal, Kagaku to Seibutsu (Chemistry and Biology), as follows: “Papers should be those whose contents cannot be explained properly in languages other than Japanese, or those that are of particular interest to Japanese readers.”
Akinori Ota, 57, a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences who participated in making the revision, says papers likely to draw attention from around the world should be submitted to its English journal, Bioscience, Biotechnology and Biochemistry.
“It isn’t that we don’t encourage researchers to write papers in Japanese. However, papers written in Japanese are not widely read overseas,” Ota says. The society has already returned some papers to their authors together with advice to write them in English. No papers that would be appropriate for publication in Japanese have been received.
(Emphasis added.)
source: Japanese scientists use English or get the silent treatment, Asahi Shimbun, November 5, 2005.
Red-faced typo tyros up for prize over Kanji clangers
Will the winner be the blunder that turned an “easy victory after five seasons” into “cockroach extermination,” or perhaps the gaffe that transformed a “regional athletic gathering” into a “tip-off meeting?”
Thanks to the quirks of the Japanese language, a single misplaced keystroke can totally transform the way a sentence reads depending on the kanji characters the writer selects.
And now, the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation is holding a poll where competitors can vote for their favorite mistaken phrase that results from a mistyped sentence, with the winner to take home the Annual Typo Award.
Typing Japanese involves inputting simple hiragana characters and converting them into kanji. More people are now using computers to write and, unless watching the conversion closely, there is a possibility of the sentence coming out drastically different from the intended result.
Since July last year, the foundation has been seeking public submissions of wacky sentences created by conversion typos, awarding a monthly prize and a blunder prize from the 5,946 entries received.
The foundation has selected what it considers the best 22 entries — including the one that turned an “easy victory after five seasons” into “cockroach extermination” (both can be read gokiburi kaisho) — and has asked for votes from members of the general public on the entry they like best.
Voting is carried out on the foundation’s contest site until Aug. 31. Winners will be announced on the contest page on Sept. 15.
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年間変漢ミスコン：「チクリ苦情大会？」愉快な変換ミス
チクリ苦情大会を開き、ゴキブリ解消しました－－？？ 実はこれ、「地区陸上大会」と「５季ぶり快勝」の漢字変換ミス。日本漢字能力検定協会は、愉快な変換ミス作品の中から大賞の「年間変漢賞」を選ぶコンテストの投票を受け付けている。あなたも選んでみませんか。
このコンテストは、パソコンで文章を書く人が増える中、漢字を正しく使うことの大切さを改めて確認するのが狙い。
昨年７月から公募し、計５９４６作品が集まった。毎月、月間賞と次点を決めてきたが、今回は、その２２作品から最もおもしろいと思うものをオンライン投票で選ぶ。投票は３１日まで。
投票には登録が必要。９月１５日に大賞が決まり、ホームページで発表される。
Tian of the wonderfully amusing Hanzi Smatter Web site was kind enough to respond to some comments of mine by blurbing my site. I’d like to return the favor.
On a related topic, here’s a section from the Pinyin.info FAQ, which should be going up in June:
I want to get a tattoo with kanji / Chinese characters. What do you recommend?
This is probably not what you want to hear: Don’t get the tattoo. Most tattoos with Chinese characters are seriously flawed.
The chances of you getting something that looks good — and not just to you but also to others, including the hundreds of millions of people who can actually read Chinese characters and know how they’re supposed to look — are quite low. Moreover, tattoos of Chinese characters are seldom written properly or represent a correct, idiomatic translation of the wearer’s desired meaning. On the other hand, the chances of you ending up looking more or less like a fool — at least to those who know Chinese characters — are uncomfortably high. These are important considerations, given that you would need to go through pain and expense to have someone permanently stain your skin with an image that very likely will be done wrong in some important way.
Maybe with some assistance I could get a tattoo done right. Would you help me?
Sorry. I like to help people, but this just isn’t something I’d want to get involved with, especially considering all the things that could go wrong.
I already have a tattoo with Chinese characters. Can you tell me if it’s correct or not?
You might want to try Hanzi Smatter, a site “dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters (Hanzi or Kanji) in Western culture.”
TOKYO — Education minister Nariaki Nakayama on Wednesday asked a government panel on the Japanese language to come up with guidelines on the use of the honorific and polite form of speech, known as “keigo” in Japanese, to counter its widespread misuse, ministry official said.
“Although many people feel the need to use ‘keigo,’ it can hardly be said that they are using it properly,” Toshio Kojima, senior vice education minister, said in explaining the reason for making the request on Nakayama’s behalf.
The minister also asked the Council for Cultural Affairs — an advisory body to the government’s Agency for Cultural Affairs — to review the most commonly used Chinese characters in Japanese to reflect their current usage on computers.
The council’s subcommittee on the Japanese language is expected to discuss the issues and come up with a final report within two years for “keigo” and four to five years for the Chinese characters, known as the “joyo kanji.”…
As for the “joyo kanji,” Kojima said the current “joyo kanji” table should be reviewed in line with the widespread use of computers.
The current table, which specifies 1,945 common Chinese characters, has not been updated since 1981.
The subcommittee will conduct research in the next two years on the public’s ability to write and read Chinese characters, and how frequently certain ones are used for the names of people and places, as well as on some characters that are often used on computers but not included in the table.
Panel proposes guidelines to halt misuse of honorific Japanese
Thursday, February 3, 2005 at 08:07 JST
TOKYO — A government panel on the Japanese language proposed Wednesday setting up the nation’s first guidelines on the use of the honorific and polite form of speech [“keigo“] to counter its widespread misuse….The panel also calls for revaluating Chinese characters designated for common use, known as “joyo kanji,” to reflect current use of Chinese characters on computers.
The current joyo kanji table, which specifies 1,945 common Chinese characters, has not been updated since 1981. The panel notes that the table did not foresee the widespread use of computers.
The panel also suggested the need for conducting research on the public’s ability to write and read Chinese characters, and how frequently certain ones are used for the names of people and places.
An Agency for Cultural Affairs official said it is necessary to study some characters that are often used but not included in the table. (Kyodo News)
And their point is…? With computers, people are increasingly unable to write characters by hand.
From an editorial in the Asahi Shimbun:
The results of a test by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development should leave no doubt that Japanese children’s ability to read, think logically and express their thoughts is declining rapidly.
The survey was conducted last year on 15-year-olds in 41 countries and areas. It was designed to measure students’ practical ability to think independently, deal with various real problems in the world and build healthy relations with others. Since it was not a pure scholarship test, students were allowed to use calculators in solving mathematical problems.
Japanese students’ performance in the test to gauge reading skills has dropped to 14th from eighth in the previous survey in 2000. Japan registered the largest drop in scores for reading among all participating countries….
The report on the future of Japanese language education submitted in February by the Council for Cultural Affairs to the minister of education, culture, sports, science and technology reflected a strong sense of crisis about the situation….
The new curriculum guidelines implemented in the year that started in April 2002 reduced the amount of time for teaching Japanese at school. The number of children who don’t read books at all has been rising steadily.
The council report urged the government to enhance Japanese language education and provide more incentives for children to read books. As a step to achieve this goal, the report called for doubling the number of Chinese characters children learn at elementary school to cover most of the 1,945 designated by the government as basic characters. It is a very bold proposal that openly challenges the education ministry’s controversial policy of promoting “pressure-free” education….
Japanese children performed relatively well in dealing with selection problems in the OECD test but did poorly in essay questions. This should be regarded as a warning about university entrance exams in Japan.
Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward is planning to seek government approval for establishing itself as a special deregulation zone for Japanese language education. The initiative is designed to help children develop the ability to think deeply in Japanese. The plan would reduce the number of classes for comprehensive study and everyday life skills to increase the hours for Japanese language education.
Setagaya’s initiative is conspicuous amid local governments racing to create a special zone for English education. Setagaya’s sense of urgency should find a wide resonance in this country.