Language Twitter: is there any language whose writing system is a greater disaster than Japanese? Since this is necessarily subjective, let's say by the definition of hours required for a fluent native speaker to master reading and writing.
-
Show this thread
-
Replying to @Pinboard
It probably takes longer to learn a significant portion of chinese characters. Hell, chinese characters are so complicated that to learn them, they learn a combinatory alphabetic system first (bopomofo in taiwan, and pinyin in the PRC) that is used only for that purpose !
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @TyphonBaalAmmon @Pinboard
Anyway, how do you define "master reading and writing" ? After all, given how nonsensical the english orthography can be, one might say it also takes years to learn
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
Some reasonably quantifiable measure like how long it takes to teach an illiterate native speaker to write at high school level. I know the Japanese illiteracy rate is zero but you can always find foreign-born children of Japanese emigrants who didn't learn to write it.
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.