this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2024
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My favorite version of this is that spelling bees don't exist in most (any?) other language, because their systems are more intuitive and consistent, but with English, if you can consistently spell words they give you a fucking trophy and you get money for college
In french we have "concours d'orthographe". Pronunciation is pretty consistent, but we add a dozen letters for every sound we utter, so spelling's still a mess.
I've seen enough French spelling to get it, though, and I don't really speak French. English spelling is still often hard as a native speaker.
You guys can have second place, our system is the most ass "bar none".
Our system needs a deep reform; yours needs to burn to the ground and fully rebuild.
Uh oh, the internet is starting the Napoleonic Wars 2: Electric Waterloo.
Okay English is weird but y'all got nothing on Japanese. I mean what the hell is this?
Multiple systems of writing at once is terrible in a different way, yes. I hear they still have page rendering issues in 2025.
I was more talking about the number of readings for one character but yeah that too.
You have to remember that most English speaking countries don't have a spelling bee either. The US is weird.
I looked up a UK version and all I could find was old competitions about learning to spell in other languages. E.g. https://www.routesintolanguages.ac.uk/events/national-spelling-bee-competition
There are some other languages that have inconsistent spelling, but most do have some level of consistency yeah, also would character tests in Chinese/Japanese be considered similar to spelling bees?
Not really. They just have multiple pronunciation depending on which vocabulary they are part of/how they are used grammatically.
But let me tell you, learning 2000 kanji and vocab they are used in is a pain. Still love 日本語 thought.
What the heck is a sun truth language, anyways? :)
I'm in the process now, and you're definitely not wrong!
The meanings of the kanji are: sun - origin - language for 日本語
I'm sure you know this, but kanji have different meanings, and this one refers to Japan being the land of the rising sun.
Haha, yeah, I was just being silly and having a little fun. :)
Although, learning all the meanings certainly does get overwhelming at times, especially when combinations of individual kanji characters can have substantially different meanings and readings than they do on their own!
I tried to change my PC and phone language to Japanese yesterday. I did not last long. It's seriously hard.