• Nutomic@lemmy.ml
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      3 days ago

      In Korean it’s not so bad: 한, 둘, 셋, 넷. Or 일, 이, 삼, 사. Yes there are two different types of numbers…

      • nonfuinoncuro@lemmy.zip
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        2 days ago

        the latter set is just the same chinese characters spelled out phonetically

        i feel like most people nowadays are getting lazy and just using the chinese numbers more and more instead of learning a new word for each new ten (twenty thirty forty etc)

        • Nutomic@lemmy.ml
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          2 days ago

          Thats good to hear, I made a lot of mistakes of using the wrong numbers for times or dates.

          • nonfuinoncuro@lemmy.zip
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            2 days ago

            unfortunately hours (not minutes) ages and number of days/months (not years) are still korean numbers not chinese

            but i guess you can always just say the year of birth and spell out the date instead both of which would be chinese… haha languages are weird

    • Katana314@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Wait. I’ve played a lot of Fatal Frame, and they only signify the Zero Lens by its kanji, and it’s not that square shape. So now I’m confused…

      Maybe its ghost folklore origins put it more on the Chinese side?

      • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        That’s because 四 is 4

        In Japanese they also use 零 (rei) for zero. Or 〇 (maru) or ゼロ (zero)

      • AeronMelon@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Chinese characters are seen in Japanese media as stylistic choice, yes.

        The ones I typed are proper Japanese Kanji, which are derived and very simplified forms of Chinese characters. Even more so than Simplified Chinese.

        • renzhexiangjiao@piefed.blahaj.zone
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          4 days ago

          kanji are not a stylistic choice, but an integral part of the writing system

          also I think you mean the syllabaries (hiragana, katakana) are ultimately derived from chinese characters, japanese kanji are largely the same as chinese hanzi

          • AeronMelon@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            You misunderstood me because that’s not what I was saying.

            If there are Chinese characters in a Japanese game, they’re there for the visual appeal of them… unless they’re trying to actually teach Chinese, which I doubt the Fatal Frame series (horror) is doing.

              • ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml
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                4 days ago

                I think they mean Ateji/当て字, when they’re used phonetically just to represent something as foreign or for style. Like how sushi is 寿司, but the characters have nothing to do with sushi other than the pronunciation.

                Of course, these are the exception. Kanji is integral to japanese writing and it’s a pain in the ass without them.

              • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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                4 days ago

                I wonder when kanji stop being Chinese characters in the same way that souvenir used by someone speaking English isn’t using a French word. Like characters with different variations in Japanese technically aren’t used (and weren’t ever used) in China, like 誤 vs 誤 (prob won’t show up right with the font on here but the Japanese component on the bottom right uses 六 without the top dot and Chinese uses 大). The kana were all derived from kanji as well, so could those be “chinese” characters? The etymology is obviously Chinese in the same way souvenir is French, but what does that really mean?

                Dunno, maybe it’s mostly semantics, especially when trying to talk about it in English

                • renzhexiangjiao@piefed.blahaj.zone
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                  4 days ago

                  to me, “Chinese characters” means a certain writing system that is used by several languages (and not just Japanese and Mandarin, but also Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese etc.), but doesn’t inherently belong to any one of them. So, in my opinion, Japanese variants or 国字 are totally valid Chinese characters.

                  whether kana are also Chinese characters is a very interesting question. I think the main thing that makes them distinct is the purpose they serve, as they no longer convey any meaning by themselves but are instead used to write language phonetically. but I wouldn’t be so sure when it comes to 万葉がな. although manyogana was used the same way as modern kana it retained the shape of chinese characters. so maybe it’s the combination of both the evolved shape + different purpose that makes kana distinct from kanji?

                  • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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                    3 days ago

                    “Chinese characters” means a certain writing system that is used by several languages (and not just Japanese and Mandarin, but also Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese etc.), but doesn’t inherently belong to any one of them

                    Yeah, upon further consideration it seems less like a loanword being considered part of another language and more like they’d have to be called Chinese characters because that’s the origin and nothing else has replaced it, apart from some variants. It’s like how a lot of modern languages use the Latin alphabet, even if some add diacritics like ñ in Spanish.

        • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          A) Kanji are Chinese characters.

          B) Both languages simplified their characters, but Chinese was actually more aggressive in simplifying than Japanese, not the other way around.

          For example, look at the character for turtle:

          Traditional Chinese: 龜
          Simplified Chinese: 龟
          Japanese: 亀