NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/comp/std/internat/1315

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-25 | 11.6 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Chiaki Ishikawa)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: Dumb Americans (was INTERNATIONALIZATION: JAPAN, FAR EAST)
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Date: 25 Jan 93 12:14:54 GMT
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In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Glenn A. Adams) writes:

   In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:

   [Regarding 3 vs. 4 stroke grass radical...]

   >I don't care how many strokes there are. BUT, for once, I STRONGLY
   >DISAGREE.  If you ask ordinary Japanese of modern Japan in the street,
   >they would say that the characters using the radical mentioned in the
   >upper position above and the characters using the radical mentioned in
   >the lower position above are CERTAINLY DIFFERENT. I would bet about
   >1/3 to half the people would even say, "you are writing an INCORRECT
   >characters."!

   That they are judged different is not the issue; the issue is whether
   a person can read the text (i.e., is it legibile).  Even Japanese who
   would judge it incorrect could still read it,

Frankly, I have a doubt if youngsters these days would recognize as
valid characters.

   and, yes, they *may*
   notice it, surely they would in a typeset document, but would they notice
   it in a 14-point screen font?

Anyone using 14 point font for Japanese display ought to be shot! :-)
[The reason Japanese operating system environment of Apple Macintosh
was frowned upon was its initial use of 12-pixel font!]  Grownup users
of cheap terminal fully understands that some characters don't come out
right. We call them Uso-ji. (Uso is lie. Ji is character.) Educators
won't allow such terminals in elementary schools (I sincerely hope
so.)

Joking aside [well not so much of a joke actually. The motivation
behind the memory makers here in the early 1980's to develop 4M bit
ROM was to have 16x16 or 24 x 24 character font roms for small PC-like
devices and printers. Back then, Fuji XEROX was fiddling with 80x80
Japanese font since the quality this level was deemed necessary for
presentation graphics. Today's cheap PC printer markets abound with
48x48 font printers, etc.. I hope the readers of this newsgroup
understand the different emphasis on printed text quality Japanese
community expects.], I now fully realize that I put aesthetic foremost
in this case. See below about my comment to Glenn's argument about
aesthetical consideration and use of rich text.

I would like to comment, however, that the Japanese educational system
especially the elementary ones put much emphasis on aesthetical
consideration about writing letters. As John B. Melby pointed out
(Message-ID: <[e-mail]>)

    >(Food for thought:  have you heard of a US student
    >being criticized by a teacher for having the wrong number of bars
    >in a dollar sign?)

    In Japan, if a student put, say, a bar in slightly misplaced
position in a character or put the bar slightly touching other part of
the character when it should (NOTE the usage of SHOULD!) not, a student
can fail a test and required to practice until he/she gets the RIGHT
(CORRECT) writing. If a student make a mistake about the NUMBER of
bars as in Melby's rethoric question, no question asked, he/she will
definitely fail. This was the case in my childhood and, although it
seems that latitude for variation seems to exist today, there is no
fundamental difference in the current education system.

Probably, people here due to the educational emphasis may put more
value on the aesthetical outlook for daily usage of characters in
Japan.

Although, my handwriting is very lousy nowadays, I DID study the
calligraphy just like ordinary Japanese do, and if I see an incorrect
character, I cringe on it. [One of these days, cheap DTP systems abound
and incompletely trained editors abound, and the result is a lot of
magazines have so many typos here. This is NOT good, but I digress here.].

[Frankly speaking, I wonder what the Japanese delegation to CJK were
doing. Don't readers of this newsgroup wonder, too?  Taking a nap
during the discussion? :-) Of course, I doubt it. But, I can't
understand where their priority was during the CJK meeting. Wonder why
they didn't voice these concerns... My guess is that they really
didn't bother to think about the mixing of different country's
character sets. Print company's delegate, for example, would never
think of using a "standard UNICODE" font at his company, of course.
They would use special high-quality in-house Japanese font for printing
and use additional printer mark-up language to handle all other
country's font.]

   Perhaps I grew up being trained that a dollar sign always had a vertical
   line extending completely through the <S>.  If I saw a Courier dollar
   sign <$> [I'm using a Courier font here], I might say:  this is an
   INCORRECT character.  But I would not misunderstand it!

Your points are well taken. [sidenote: On my kterm, the dollar sign
does have an extending bar.]

But as for the grass character example, I doubt that the youngsters
today will understand the variation as VALID characters. And they may
NOT even recognize them as having the same origin! (Do you understand
this? Only if someone recognizes a symbol as a character and on top of
that realize the character is actually a variation to a familiar
character, then the example is very valid. But, the problem is that I
wonder if this happens all the time. :-( )

At my thirty something age going strong for 40, I do know that there
were old Chinese characters and can recognize old pre-WW-II Japanese
characters more or less.  But, youngsters[10s,20s] in today's Japan
may NOT. And THIS IS A GRAVE CONCERN.

Perhaps, you studied these scripts too much and forgot that these
segments of the general population in Japan exists who would not
recognize the characters in your example.

   The point is that there is no situation in Japanese where having a
   3 or 4 stroke grass radical makes a difference in meaning.  From a
   linguistic perspective, these would be called "allographs" of a single
   "grapheme".  A collection of allographs of a grapheme are those symbols
   which instantiate the grapheme and which, if any other allograph is
   substituted, does not create a difference in meaning.  For example,
   the grapheme <$> has a number of allographs, one with one vertical
   stroke, one with two, intersecting or non-intersecting vertical strokes;
   lower case <a> and <g> have two common allographs each, etc.

If only the reader KNOW that the character IS the same, yes.  But I
doubt the assumption. You may not believe my doubt. But, if you have a
chance to talk to the elementary and junior high school teachers here,
you may change your opinion.

Another thing is that if someone writes a text mixing the correct
(accepted) characters and characters using different (old, maybe)
radicals, he/she is considered nuts at worst or eccentric at least.
We have no use for such writing system in ordinary life unless we are
writing a fan letter to, say, Saturday Night Live :-)

   If you can show me a text where the difference between a 3 and 4 stroke
   grass radical makes a difference in meaning, then I may agree with you.
   [I would exclude from this test a text which is artifically making a
   distinction, e.g., to create a pun based on the written form of the
   character.]

No, from my knowledge of characters, probably I won't be able to
produce a text. [The only place where such difference DOES make great
difference is proper nouns, i.e., people's names and names of places.
These are important exceptions, and should not be ignored. A publisher
can get sued if you consistently print somebody's name using incorrect
characters, I suppose. Yeah, they don't make meaningful distinction TO
ME and probably to you(?). But to someone whose name is often
misrepresented by incorrect characters, it MUST be a big deal.
However, I don't think this is a good examples of the general topic we
discuss here. Still, Glenn-san, you may be someday faced with such
unhappy person, unhappy because of the UNICODE WITHOUT rich-text
standard.]

On the other hand, I can probably show you probably a real example of
living Japanese (more likely young ones in their twenties) who may NOT
recognize the variation as correct and VALID characters and complain
and request to use Japanese characters!

I have to say you miss the point I raise about the apprehension I and
some other Japanese people have here. You probably studied these
scripts too much and forgot about the whole new generation of Japanese
who have never had the chance to read the old-fashioned characters
written by someone, Glenn-san. To them, and actually to me, they ARE
currently different characters with different cultural/historical
baggages behind their back, and in this sense, the meaning of such
characters is lost. It is no use trying to say the meaning is the same.
Actually, to me, that the different symbol or font is used already
changes the meaning!

   Your arguments on "correctness" are based on aesthetic criteria, and
   not on meaningful distinction.  The Han unification makes only the
   latter the criteria for distinctness of abstract form; the notion of
   form "abstraction" is simply the removal of aesthetic criteria.

Understood.

   If you must maintain aesthetic distinctions between different forms of
   a single unified Han character, then you must use some form of rich
   text, e.g., escape sequences, out-of-band style data, or whatever it
   takes to allow your system to display that single character differently
   depending on its linguistic (or font) context.

I agree that the rich text approach is vital and INDISPENSABLE here. I
agree on this point. But in assuming the use of additional information
UNICODE certainly loses some attractiveness in the presense of
apparent lack of rich text standard that every one uses.  Your points
about the use of rich text are well taken.

However, the arguments about the readability of the grass radical
characters leave much to be desired.  I agree that using rich-text
probably could solve the picky problems I mentioned. But, then, I
think it is best to say that rich text IS NECESSARY instead of
assuming the reading skill of modern Japanese.  I know it is a pain
in the neck to say UNICODE or ISO with suitable rich text mechanism
when it is simpler to say just UNICODE.  But such is life.

We are not designing and contemplating a character set that is used
only by linguists and computer professionals.  We have to think of the
end users.  We must understand their requirements, learning skill,
educational requirements, etc.  And in this case, I am afraid you are
overrating the intelligence (in terms of character cognition skill) of
modern Japanese :-)

Or, I am underating it.

Again, thank you for your long posting. I find yours always reflect
your patient style and readable. [Of course, I may disagree with the
content, though.]


 Chiaki Ishikawa,  Personal Media Corp.,  MY Bldg, 1-7-7 Hiratsuka,
 Shinagawa, Tokyo 142, JAPAN. FAX:[phone], Phone:[phone]
 UUNET: [e-mail]