Japanology A (日本学 A)

漢字の入力・Han ideograph input

2006 年 6月12日

http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp/2006/Japanology/lecture2.html

© 2006 Martin J. Dürst 青山学院大学

Questions we will think about today

• Is the Japanese writing system too difficult?
• What is the most difficult aspect of the Japanese writing system?
  
  • For individuals
  • For society
  • For technology
• How do writing system and technology interact?
• How to input Japanese on the computer?

Homework from last time (no need to submit)

• Check out the links from this presentation
• Look around yourself and find various different glyphs/shapes of characters you know (Latin, 漢字,....)
• For checking Han character variants in Unicode, use the Lookup of the Unihan Database
• prepare for next lecture by reading Computers and Culture: The Case of the Japanese Writing System

The Japanese Writing System and Technology: Memory

Example: memory needed to store a font:

Western alphabet, minimal: 100characters×7high×5wide = 3500bits = 440bytes

Japanese, minimal: 3000characters×16high×16wide = 768000bits = 96000bytes

One of the reasons why Japanese worked hard on memory chips

Display and Printers

• High requirements for printing quality
  • General tendency for high quality in Japan
  • Requirements from writing system
• Strong printer industry

Japanese Input Methods

• Traditional typewriters and similar models
• Kana-Kanji-Conversion
• Other methods

Kana-Kanji-Conversion Variants

• Kana-Kanji-Conversion vs. Romaji-Kana-Kanji-Conversion
• Single character conversion
• 熟語 (compound) conversion
• 文節 (clause) conversion
• Free text conversion

Prerequisites for Conversion

• Memory
• Lookup structures
• Parsing algorithms
• Semantic propability checks (Artificial Intelligence?)

Famous example:
貴社の記者は汽車で帰社しました。

Cognitive Aspects of Japanese Input

Compared with typing English or other alphabetic languages:

• Less resilient to errors (errors propagate)
• Need for constant checking
• More mental attention needed for input process

Alternative Input Methods

• T-Code:
  • Each Kanji or Kana is input by two keystrokes
  • Keystrokes are assigned randomly based on character frequency
  • Takes time to learn (but good typing takes time to learn anyway)
  • More intuitive and direct
• SKK:
  • Uses shift key to indicate start and end of Kanji
  • More information leads to better predictability of input results
  • Less input errors/corrections needed

Character Simplification

• Character simplifications both in Japan and in China after the War
• Main goals: Easier to write, easier to learn
• With computer input independent of character shape no longer an issue?

Homework (no need to submit)

• Check out Japanese mobile phones and their history
• Compare Japanese mobile phones and their usage in society with the mobile phones and their usage in your home country