Patrick emailed me this fantastic find from Simplythebest.net.
It is a free downloadable “Japanese Font”.
(screen capture)
Notice the inconsistency of whether it is “Japanese” or “Asian” font between its title and first sentence in the description?
Anyone who has the very basic knowledge of Chinese or Japanese language would know there is no such thing as “Kanji alphabet”.
Plus, the font table is nothing but a bunch of random simplified Chinese characters. Not to be confused with the "example" shown above, font table looks like this.
Even though this is not the same font used in Marquis Daniels or that Finnish racist’s tattoo, it may explain why and how incorrect tattoos are generated with.
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And then there's the fact that Chinese characters aren't ideograms and don't each represent "a different idea" independent of sound.
ReplyDeleteI think you are being too hard on whoever wrote this. First, the characters at the bottom are not simplified Chinese, they are Japanese characters as the descriptor claims. Of course they are random, it's a sample. You cannot make a meaningful sentence in Japanese without using hiragana, which is a different font. Also, a Japanese font would obviously fall under the category of 'Asian Fonts' so there is not really a conflict.
ReplyDeleteI like this site but sometimes you could use some help with the Japanese language.
--chris
Chris,
ReplyDeleteThere is a difference between "example" and "font table".
What is shown on Simplythebest.net is the "example". After you download the ACTUAL font file, you can then open it up, and that is called the "FONT TABLE".
Before you leave your comment, make sure read through.
what an idiot.
Chris,
ReplyDeleteWhere are your linguistic qualifications?
I don't know much about the Japanese language, but from what I do understand the japanese language does have an "alphabet".
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'm no expert on Chinese, but I do know that many of the Chinese characters used today did actually evolve from ideograms.
Chris,
ReplyDeleteYou need to look up the definition of "simplified Chinese".
Look at Row 1, Character 3(time), and Row 2, Character 4(intimacy).
In Japanese, they are written as 時 and 誼。In simplified Chinese characters, they are written as 时 and 谊。
I could go on, but the point is made.
You obviously a) do not know the difference, b) did not read the description, and c) did not actually try out the font to know how it works.
thm,
ReplyDeleteJapanese technically does not have an alphabet - it's a syllabary, where each character represents one syllabic sound. But since you can 'write' sentences using just these phonetic characters and still have it relatively comprehensible, many people like to think of it as an alphabet.
Clarifications:
ReplyDeleteThe Japanese language has 2 'alphabet' systems, the Hiragana and Katakana. They use Kanji too, but like in Chinese, it's no alphabet. The characters have individual meanings, and can also be put together to form new, (related) meanings. It's impossible to have a 'font' for Kanji like in the example. A proper Kanji fonts should consist of 'strokes' used to form the character.
And yes, those characters are not even Japanese! They are simplified Chinese. Japanese Kanji are mostly traditional Chinese characters, with some unique modifications that make some of them different from Chinese.
*and to those who might question me: I am Chinese, and I have learnt Japanese.
I'd also like to point out that 佛 is a traditional character, modern Japanese uses 仏.
ReplyDeleteWow, it sure doesn't take much to get flamed around here. These comments are pretty condesending.
ReplyDeleteI went back and looked a little closer and realize I did make a mistake. (Though lost of non-Joyo kanji are included in Japanese fints.)
I think that most people don't understand how asian fonts are inputted using a western keyboard and explaining why you cannot enter a kanji/hanzi with a single keystroke and if you try, you end up with gibberish would have helped.
Incidently, the example is the alphabet and the font table is 'Jackdaws love my big sphinx...'
--Chris
ps. Hanenosuke, I was up boarding in Iwate last weekend.
whoa i see this rubbish font before on some icon maker who claims that is japanese when i told her that it's not a "font" nor it is japanese. she still insisted. why. let her make a fool of herself! silly westerners.
ReplyDelete"I think that most people don't understand how asian fonts are inputted using a western keyboard and explaining why you cannot enter a kanji/hanzi with a single keystroke and if you try, you end up with gibberish would have helped."
ReplyDeleteChris, Tian stated in the entry that there is no kanji alphabet, so naturally, if you type in the English alphabet on a Western keyboard, you're going to end up with gibberish.
Chris,
ReplyDeleteIt has nothing to do with getting "flamed" or not.
You should at least read through the entire entry and go through all the reference links before you speak/type.
Tian and Hanzi Smatter have done a great job of providing reference links. Some of the major newspapers don't even bother to do so.
Agreement @ last anonymous.
ReplyDeleteChris, I'm glad that you realized your error, but I stand by my earlier points. If I state something that is completely wrong, I had better expect criticism for it.
About differences between different characters with the same meanings in Japanese and Chinese, they are results of different simplification campaigns. IMHO The PRC's simplifications are far broader than Japan's. And there's the traditional characters of Taiwan, Hong-Kong and Korean Hanja. I even heard an occasion for Malaysia and Singapore, where the character for "House", 家 (Ka and ie in Japanese, Jia in Mandarin) which involves a part in a character meaning "Pig" (豚)is altered into a character written with 宀 and 人 (roof and human), because the countries' wide Muslim population would not have pigs under their roofs.
ReplyDeleteAnd for the peoples' misunderstanding about Asian languages and countries, it happens everywhere. When I was in Japan in 1999, there was an earthquake in Taiwan and my mum called from Turkey (which also had a serious quake earlier the same year by the way) and asked me if I was OK or not. When I told about the distance, and I wouldn't even feel that, she said: "I'm not a map expert like you, it's all the same East Asia to me". On several occasions, I was shown Chinese and Korean texts, and once a text in Thai and was asked if I could read them or not. Even a translation office sent me a Korean text to translate, thinking it was Japanese. Some translation office eh?
"I even heard an occasion for Malaysia and Singapore, where the character for "House", 家 (Ka and ie in Japanese, Jia in Mandarin) which involves a part in a character meaning "Pig" (豚)is altered into a character written with 宀 and 人 (roof and human), because the countries' wide Muslim population would not have pigs under their roofs."
ReplyDeleteWhat? I'm FROM Malaysia and I've never heard of this. The Muslim (mostly Malay, some Indian) population doesn't even use Chinese, so there would be no reason for this. The 'jia1' word is displayed publicly all over the place on shop signs etc.
The other reason that makes no sense is that nobody keeps pigs under their roof anyway, Chinese or otherwise. (Most people in Malaysia live in houses with floors, plumbing, electricity, and Internet...NOT IN HUTS WITH LIVESTOCK, thanks very much.)
- Shi-Hsia, Malaixiya de banana
I'm from Singapore and I can also assure you that 'jia' is still written as it is. Muslims are not unreasonable people! Why would they ask people to alter their language?
ReplyDeleteThe Chinese character 'jia' is written as a roof with a pig because in ancient China, peasants kept animals.
"The other reason that makes no sense is that nobody keeps pigs under their roof anyway, Chinese or otherwise. (Most people in Malaysia live in houses with floors, plumbing, electricity, and Internet...NOT IN HUTS WITH LIVESTOCK, thanks very much.)"
ReplyDeleteGood lord.... talk about "cultural sensitivity". We ALL USED TO LIVE IN HUTS WITH LIVESTOCK at one point - which is why Ulas's explanation sounds perfectly reasonable. And you might be surprised to hear this, but Chinese characters were created just a bit before electricity. I believe you that the modern "jia" character is the same as Chinese, but just because you're from Malaysia doesn't make you an expert in etymology.
As for Ulas's theory (he just said that he had "heard of it", people), that character might have existed and is now no longer used, or it might still exist but only within certain circles of scholars or what have you. Chinese characters were created and modified in such ways, and although I don't think Muslims are unreasonable people, there is every reason to believe they are very devout, especially toward their "taboos". It's a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Whoa! Don't be mad at me. Because, I've only heard of that, from a person who is completely neither Malaysian nor Singaporean and I did not say I believed in that. But she was a scholar for Sinology and I thought that she could have some base there. But anyway, not all the theories are proved to be true. This especially applies to social sciences such as linguistics and history. You cannot make a scientific experiment on such subjects, you can search on documents which can even be manipulated or completely made up. Many things we thought as facts are proven myths by some, and vice versa. Anyway, as Andrew put it, it could have been used to some extent in history, could have been used in some circles, etc. or could be a completely fallen theory. But this does not apply to the fact today. Thank you all for correcting my mistake and misunderstanding.
ReplyDeleteAnd as for "houses with livestock" thing, I'm sorry if I offended you. That's the last thing I would want to do, as I'm from a country which has fallen under such prejudice and misunderstanding. You would not believe how many people asked me if I was "living in the desert", "spending January in a T-Shirt" (when I read this from a penfriend's letter, it was snowing and freezing cold outside!) or "do you ride camels to go to work" Some tourists were cancelling their holidays in Turkey when war broke in Afghanistan, thinking Turkey is near Afghanistan (the distance is far bigger than the distance between Japan and Taiwan). I, of course never think that Malaysians live in huts with livestock today, it was a statement on the Hanzi's structure and the old times when people kept animals in (or very close) their homes, told by kookabaru and Andrew. Perhaps my lousy English made you feel like that. Deply sorry.
And about Muslims asking people altering their characters...I did not have an idea of the method, I've just heard that there were some practise-which apparently wasn't and I was not told how they managed. Might be a made-up story about devoutness, who knows?
First, "Deply sorry" should be "Deeply sorry" it was just a typo. Sorry once again.
ReplyDeleteOn with the subject. I thought it over once again how this rumor/myth/story was thought as real. Just hypotethically speaking of course, to avoid a confusion like the one I caused...that might be some unofficial simplification. Simplification of characters were via different ways. In Japan for instance, where the people made a whole new set (kana) of letters out of kanji, there were various different variants to write a kanji simpler, some of them were accepted and the character was officially simplified that way. Other variants dfiminished or survived to some extent. 第 (dai) for example, is the Japanese prefix for cardinal numbers used as 第一 (Dai-ichi: first, number one) In Japan it is sometimes written with a character looking like ヤ (katakana ya) with some extra strokes. Speaking of the days of China with a bustling trade scene involving almost every nation, being a cultural model and a great power of the region and Chinese language being a kind of Lingua Franca for the region; it should not be surprising people from other countries has taken some hanzi to be able to communicate for different purposes. Somebody might have written 家 a little carelessly and made up a character with 宀 and 人, some might not have remembered how 家 is written and used his logic of a house with "a roof and a person under it" and wrote the character that way, or some devout person used this way. Possibilities are endless, and we have so little info on that. Hanzi is a system that is (or better say was) open to modification according to the language, we can see that in different meanings for the same character (湯 J:Yu=hot water, C:Tang=Soup), characters that have been produced in different countries, like Japan's Kokuji (国字) and Vietnam's Chu-nom, and different simplification methods such as Chinese and Japanese simpflications etc. Language is a living thing, that's for sure. Maybe I can reach to that teacher to ask about that controversial character.
Speaking of Chu-nom, Vietnamese Han-tu (Hanzi in Vietnamese) made to write native words, there's an interesting thing I saw. The Chu-nom character used to write "Mother" consists of 女 (woman) on the left and 美 (beautiful) on the right. Nicely made isn't it? You can check that out in http://www.omniglot.com , a site on writing systems that includes almost everything (even unnecessary things). I'd recommend Tian to put a link of it, great site, I tell you.