Japanese Script Research Articles

The Japanese script and computers: The JIS character codes and their periphery

The Japanese script and computers: The JIS character codes and their periphery

Why put East Asian materials in a separate collection? The issue of access

Libraries selecting and purchasing materials in East Asian languages must decide whether or not to integrate these items into the general collection. The issue is access: romanized access through a Latin-script library catalog or nonromanized access through a browsing collection. This article explores the difficulties encountered in romanizing Chinese and Japanese scripts, and recommends a separate East Asian collection.

Processing of Kanji and Kana characters within Japanese words

Two experiments were conducted to examine the temporal relationship between whole-word and character processing in Japanese. Two kinds of Japanese script were used as stimuli: Kanji, an ideographic script, and Kana, a syllabic script. In Experiment 1, Kanji word processing and Kanji character processing were examined using a successive visual comparison task. The whole-word advantage (Marmurek, 1986) was not found. In Experiment 2, Kana words and characters were used. As in Experiment 1, no whole-word advantage was found. The absence of the whole-word advantage is attributed to the fact that Kanji and Kana characters represent higher level units of processing than alphabetic letters. The difference between word and nonword processing was shown by manipulations of the visual similarity and the homophony between stimuli presented successively. Visual similarity affected both words and nonwords, whereas homophony affected words only.

The Development of CJK Bibliographic Databases in North America and East Asia

The successful development of computer technology for automating Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CIK) vernacular scripts and the completion of the RLIN CJK system in 1983 marked the beginning of online operations of East Asian libraries in North America and helped keep them in the mainstream of library automation. The RLIN CIK system and the subsequently developed OCLC CJK system are building CJK bibliographic databases which have made East Asian cooperative cataloging and resources sharing a true reality. The emergence, features, current conditions, and future plans of the two CJK systems are discussed. So are the automated programs of national libraries in East Asia in terms of their building national databases for vernacular materials and designing and producing national MARCs for exchange of bibliographic information among libraries. The outlook of cooperation between the CJK systems and international exchange of CJK bibliographic information is also examined.

Scripts and reading research

The paper describes four writing systems and a few example scripts under each system. Under the heading “Research Common to Different Scripts,” the paper then discusses research on phonetic coding, eye movements in reading, and cortical processing, in English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean scripts. Under the heading “Research Unique to Specific Scripts,” it discusses research on word recognition in English orthography, in Japanese Kanji and Kana, and in Korean Hangul. Linguistic, cognitive, and cortical processing seems to be similar for people reading sentences and text in different scripts; processing seems to be dissimilar for people recognizing individual symbols in different scripts.

Effect of visual complexity in tachistoscopic recognition of Kanji and Kana symbols by German subjects

Kana and Kanji characters differing in figural complexity, as defined by the number of strokes, were presented tachistoscopically in the right and left visual field to 20 right-handed German subjects not familiar with Japanese script. Neither an interaction between complexity of script and visual field nor any simple main effect of visual field were obtained. It is concluded that the complexity of the different types of script is not critical for visual field asymmetries observed in experiments dealing with the recognition of Kana and Kanji in Japanese subjects.

Riben xingming cidian: jiamingxu (A Dictionary of Japanese Names: Arranged by Japanese Phonetic Script [Kana

Riben xingming cidian: jiamingxu (A Dictionary of Japanese Names: Arranged by Japanese Phonetic Script [Kana

Reading and writing in English and Japanese: A cross‐cultural study of young children*

We report a series of experiments which compare the ways in which Japanese and English children read and write single words. The Japanese children read and wrote the words in two types of script, kana and kanji. The first of these consists of symbols which signify syllables, and the second entirely of ideograms. Both groups read and wrote words with and without concurrent vocalization. Concurrent vocalization had no apparent effect on reading or writing kanji: nor did it affect reading English words. But it did consistently impede reading and writing kana words and it did impair writing English. We conclude, tentatively, that English children may read words without the help of prelexical phonological analysis, but that they spell them on the basis of sound‐symbol relationships. We also conclude that there may be no such sharp distinction between reading and writing in either of the two types of Japanese script.

Bushu: The Radicals of the Japanese Script

Bushu: The Radicals of the Japanese Script

An evoked potential correlate of reading ideographic and phonetic Japanese scripts

Hemispheric differences associated with reading kanji, an ideographic Japanese script, and with reading hiragana, a phonetic Japanese script, using the visual evoked potential were examined. A lateral distribution effect of the P 1N 1 component complex related to the reading of each script was found. The results are interpreted as supporting the view that the reading of hiragana depends upon activation of the angular gyrus on the dominant side while the reading of kanji probably does not.

Teaching of Romanised Japanese Scripts and the Teacher's Position

Teaching of Romanised Japanese Scripts and the Teacher's Position

The Phonetics of Japanese Language. With Reference to Japanese Script. By P. M. Suski. 7 X 5. pp. 123. Los Angeles: The Science Society; London: Kegan Paul, 1931. 9s.

The Phonetics of Japanese Language. With Reference to Japanese Script. By P. M. Suski. 7 X 5. pp. 123. Los Angeles: The Science Society; London: Kegan Paul, 1931. 9<i>s</i>.

The Phonetics of Japanese Language with reference to Japanese Script. By P. M. Suski. Cap. 8vo, pp. 122. The Science Society, Los Angeles, U.S.A. London Agents: Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trubner, Trench &amp; Co.

The Phonetics of Japanese Language with reference to Japanese Script. By P. M. Suski. Cap. 8vo, pp. 122. The Science Society, Los Angeles, U.S.A. London Agents: Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trubner, Trench &amp; Co.

The New School of Japan, Founded for the Purpose of Making the Use of the Newly Invented Letters

THIS singular production is an attempt, by means of a quaintly conceived dialogue between two Japanese script reformers, to enlist home and foreign support, especially financial support, towards the promulgation of yet another script for the purposes of the Japanese written language, by modifications of and additions to the roman alphabet of the West. But European scholars have already accomplished this, and the existing system of romanisation is sufficiently perfect for all practical purposes. That system uses the roman letters, as we use them, to transcribe the characters of the Japanese syllabary, each of which represents a vowel or an open syllable; thus ka, ki, ku, ko, ke represent simply and adequately corresponding simple kana (syllabic) characters. But the proposed system would use single alphabetic letters to represent the kana. Thus ka, ki, &c., are written n, v, u, k; for ke a sort of reversed fe is used. The modifications of sound, voicing, doubling, and lengthening are denoted by ordinary devices and combinations of these, and a few new letters are invented. Thus Kono hon wa, Okuma Shigeru to Yamada Eizo... (this book contains a talk between Okuma Sh. and Yamada Ei.) is printed, according to the new system, Pk cx g Ttuf-Cat m Ofr-Tict (two or three new letters are represented here by their nearest usual ones). Eizo Yamada is the “originator” of the new system; the preface,.dated November, 1909, is signed by him and Muneyasu Oki, who is “business associate,” and photographs of inventor and associate follow the preface. The New School of Japan, Founded for the Purpose of Making the Use of the Newly Invented Letters. Pp. x + 58. (Tokyo: Dokuritsu Bungakki.)