Page 1 of 1
I suddenly had this odd question
Posted: January 12th, 2010, 12:47 pm
by Kor
which is a "longer" language, english or japanese? I mean, if you translate a book from one language to another (given the translator is good), which book would be longer (amount of words)? the english one or the japanese one?
Re: I suddenly had this odd question
Posted: January 12th, 2010, 12:58 pm
by Rellik
if the size of each english letter = the size of 1 japanese character then it would be japanese
since there are many examples where like 6 letter english words is only 2 characters in japanese - tbh alot of nouns can be formed with only 2 characters
basing this on my knowledge of chinese lol - basically same as kanji so i assume it will be smaller
example:
I went to his house - 15 words
in chinese (if i can also count this as kanji) - its around 6 characters depending on how you translate it
Re: I suddenly had this odd question
Posted: January 12th, 2010, 5:46 pm
by c-square
Rellik wrote:
if the size of each english letter = the size of 1 japanese character then it would be japanese
since there are many examples where like 6 letter english words is only 2 characters in japanese - tbh alot of nouns can be formed with only 2 characters
basing this on my knowledge of chinese lol - basically same as kanji so i assume it will be smaller
example:
I went to his house - 15 words
in chinese (if i can also count this as kanji) - its around 6 characters depending on how you translate it
I agree. It really depends on the Japanese character set being used. If everything is in hiragana/katakana, then Japanese is by far the longer language. However, as Rellik pointed out, Kanji can be used to represent multiple characters, so if Kanji is being used, then Japanese is the shorter language.
Another consideration is how formal the language is that's being used. Formal Japanese is very long and it takes many syllables to say what you want to. Casual Japanese, on the other hand, usually omits subjects and endings, making it much shorter, and often shorter than English. For example: "Are you going to eat dinner?"
If you're asking your calligraphy teacher: Sensei wa yuushoku wo meshiagarimasu ka?
If you're asking a friend: Yuushoku wo tabemasu ka?
If you're asking a child: Bangohan taberu?