Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Now they tell us...

"There is no need to be able to write by hand all the kanji"

That's fortunate really, since the junior high school level Kanji tests that I showed to a few highly educated university graduates were entirely beyond them. Nevertheless, the list of "daily use" kanji that everyone is supposed to learn is set to grow, to include such gems as "momme" (匁) which my iMac doesn't even know - I had to cut and paste that from a web page. Apparently it's a unit of mass equivalent to 3 3/4 grams and used in the pearl industry. "Daily use" indeed.

Update: OK, I'm wrong, momme is being removed, but utsu (鬱) is being added. I can't even see the different strokes in that!

1 comment:

Rob Day said...

My daughters (who can read kanji and expressed despair about the list getting bigger) and I (who can't read kanji but have an interest) agree completely.

Even with maximum magnification in Firefox and using a glass we can't quite see the radical in the top half of the radical in the bottom left corner. And the fact that I have to describe it like that shows what the problem is.

Making the language depend on computer entry seems like a bit of an issue to me. OK, so this is Japan and everyone under 50 is wired all the time, but still, what about people who don't want to use a mobile to express their feelings of depression and/or admiration for your herbaceous border?