What the Kanji can teach you about life

I find learning Japanese a fascinating experience- mainly because it is quite different from any of the other languages I have learnt.  And of all its aspects I find the system of writing quite interesting. Of course Japanese borrowed and evolved the Chinese system of writing so the kanjis (characters) in both alphabets can be similar.

There are three separate ways of writing in Japanese- the hiragana, the katakana and the kanjis. The hiragana is a phonetic system of alphabets that can be used to spell any word in the language (except words borrowed from other languages), katakana another phonetic system of alphabets used exclusively to spell words borrowed from foreign languages (and Japanese has a lot of them- especially modern international words related to technology, management etc) and lastly the kanji- the chinese characters.

Learning the kanjis can be interesting and challenging at the same time. Students (and Japanese children) start with the easiest ones and progress through levels of difficulty. Kanjis are useful in that even if you do not at times know the pronunciation of a certain word, character you may be able to vaguely guess at the meaning if you had learnt them once.

But at times kanjis can be daunting. Take a look at the construction below

Airplane (from Otake Japanese Calligraphy Website)

 

The first time you look at this set of characters (which incidentally mean aircraft/ plane), you baulk at the complexity of the letters and get the feeling that you will never learn them. You want to throw up your arms in the air and give up. But then there is a trick to learning them and that is to learn their stroke order. You see- even the most complex kanji is always made of a number of small strokes. For example the first character can be parsed in the following way

Stroke Order (from Nihongo Ichiban Website)

So even though there are many strokes, they are fairly simple and if followed in a particular order you can very quickly learn the kanji. In fact I feel it is easier to remember the complex kanjis because you pay attention when you are learning them.

So what is the lesson the kanji are teaching everyone about life? It is that often in life things can appear unimaginably complex, baffling and impossible. You feel forced to give up but remember even the most complex problems can be broken down into simple elements that can be taken up one at a time.

Cheers!

It’s SuKanya RamanujaN by the way…

That’s right Sukanya with a K as in Knife and Ramanujan without an m at the end like …hmm…Venezuela.

You might be wondering what the fuss is all about and you are right to do so. Do bear with me over the next few minutes.

My first name Sukanya is derived from that ancient language- Sanksrit- that influenced and gave birth to many other languages- some of which exist until this day. And therefore this is a name that has a fairly wide currency and can be passed off as a local name in parts of South and Southeast Asia. And also therefore this name is spelt correctly in most of these places- with one grand exception- in Tamil Nadu-the region of my own birth.

It is almost as if people are wearing blinkers and the moment they hear the name Sukanya begin to spell it in the most abhorrent Suganya (arrgh!) way. Over the years I have grown not to let this irritate me. After all Tamil only has one sound for “Ka/ Ga” and it is therefore quite natural for people to default to the more common “Ga” sound rather than the “Ka”. So if someone spelt my name wrongly without ever having seen it written down, I cannot blame them much. And yet even when people see my name spelt on a piece of paper or an ID card they will wilfully ignore it and spell my name in their own way. And its not just my first name that gets affected- the Ramanujan part of my name also gets morphed into a Ramanujam with annoying results.

That is SuKanya with a K and not a G

However what annoys me even more is how inconsistent people can be in their lackadaisical way of spelling names. My driving license spells my name as Sukanya Ramanujam, but spells my father’s name correctly with a Ramanujan. Dudes!!!

You might wonder what the big fuss is about but my name is an integral part of my identity and random tampering with it by uninterested bureaucrats or bankers or salesman seems like a gross travesty to me.

Both components of my name are spelt in the correct way gramatically (with the K and N) and yet sometimes the mistaken version is the one that comes to people’s minds first because they happen to be more common. This is also how language evolves when sometimes the mistaken form of a word is used more commonly and over time becomes the only form known. Thereby I am doomed to remain Suganya Ramanujam in the minds of many at least here in Tamil Nadu. I will however keep on fighting!

And yes my first line was inspired by the Thomson and Thompson characters from Tintin where Thompson says his name is spelt with a P as in Philadelphia and Thomson without the P as in Venezuela.

Thomson and Thompson

Pesky Plurals

Anyone growing up in India in the 80’s and maybe the early 90’s, when TV was not yet invaded by the army of satellite and cable channels that called themselves the Star and Zee network, would remember that there was only good old Doordarshan- India’s National (Govt) TV channel. And good old Doordarshan had this animated strip- Ek Titli Anek Titiliyan (One Butterfly, Many Butterflies) that still drives many older people to nostalgic tears.  I’m glad that I was able to find this video on youtube of that animation.

You may be wondering  why I decided to post  an obscure animation strip from the 80s – infact I hardly  think of this cartoon myself, but I suddenly remembered it in the context of a concept I was thinking of this evening whilst shopping for groceries (who says chores are not good for your soul?)

One of the things that always fascinates me about learning different languages is how different sets of people came up with their own ways to explain similar concepts. In the cartoon strip above, the first part is uniquely dedicated to the girl explaining to her little brother the concept of plurals- one sun, one moon, many starts/ one squirrel, many squirrels/ one butterfly, many butterflies and so on. The general theme of the video is unity- how we are stronger together than apart. But for today’s post I will just take the first part.

Plurals. How often do speakers of English or most Indo European languages question the necessity of plurals? From the start we begin to learn how to make more out of one- butterflies from butterfly, mangoes from mango, geese from goose. How else could we describe objects in their multiples except by modifying the nouns? How else really?

But the fact is that there are quite a few languages that get away without the bother of modifying nouns to make plurals. In fact the notion of plurals does not exist at all. I first encountered this when I learnt Japanese. I was stunned- “But how would they differentiate between 1 glass of water and 2 glasses of water?” I pondered- much like the students before and after me.  It was then that I was introduced to the magical world of counters.

The Japanese do not describe plurals in the same way we do. This is not to say they cannot differentiate one book from many book or two books. It is just that they say it in a way without modifying the noun- with the counters. Counters are standard terms that are used to denote multiple quantities of nouns. Nouns are classified into families depending on their qualities- for example all machines get a counter, all houses and buildings get a counter, birds get a counter, books & stationery get a counter, people get a counter (of course!) and so on.

So instead of saying ‘There is one computer’ and ‘There are two computers’ and so on, the Japanese would say ‘Computer One (counter term- in this case dai) is’, ‘Computer Two (dai) is’ and so on. I simplify of course but that is the basic concept.  The same goes for all nouns with their counters. Of course if you don’t always want to be counting how many objects there are, you could always use general terms such as many and few to describe the plurality of the situation around you.

So far from having a dumbed down unitary world, this language in a way gives you a heads up- let’s suppose you didn’t recognise the object the person is talking about but you catch the counter and you remember that it is the counter used to describe cylindrical objects then you can probably guess from the context of the talk as to what the object is.

But of course the first obstacle is the learning of the counters themselves. To a first time learner of the language, the counters can be daunting. Only regular practice and rote can help- I won’t lie. But there is a cop-out mechanism- a general counter which can be used for all objects- the people will understand you if you use this, but the overlord of Grammar will frown upon you.

A few years after I first encountered Japanese, I realised that the system of counters was not unique to Japanese language and culture. Sure enough I found counters in Mandarin Chinese as well. And then when I looked harder I found the same system in existence in Thai. I am guessing that languages such as Korean and Lao have the same system though I am slightly more doubtful about Burmese, Vietnamese and Khmer. I am not surprised about the link between Chinese and Japanese- the Japanese character script itself was borrowed from Chinese and so interconnections would be many but I was quite surprised by finding Thai figuring in this list for I always assumed that Thai was always influenced more by Sanskrit but what do I know?

Do you know of any other language that uses this system of counters? Do let me know.  In the meantime I’ll go back to shedding the tears over the Ek Titli video

One, More and Many

Learning By Numbers?

This phrase and variations of it are much cliched “Learning a new language expands your horizons”. I am all for banishing cliches but I guess sometimes that cliches exist because they convey an inherent truth.

I like to think of myself as a serial language learner- nothing gives me more pleasure than when a set of squiggles start making sense to me or when gibberish becomes intelligible.

But one of the main reasons that keeps me hooked on to learning new languages (or perfecting my skills in the ones I know) is how they offer a perspective into understanding another culture- wow that is another cliche right there!

The point being that you get to understand something about a culture that a regular person who hasn’t learnt that language wouldn’t know- and this gives you an edge over them- and this can help in anything from just making friends or closing business deals (oh God! enough with the cliches already!)

Just take an example from the domain of numbers:

Numerical Differences

In India we grew up with a number system that is quite different from that elsewhere in the western world.

It goes

10- ten

100- hundred

1000- thousand

10000- ten thousand

100000- lakh

1000000- ten lakhs

10000000- crore

Beyond that everything is just denominated in tens, hundreds, thousands (or more recently- at least going by politcal scandals) in lakhs of crores. A lakh is also more recently spelt a lac.

But in the west it is quite obviously the thousands, hundred thousands, millions and the billions that rule.

10- ten

100- hundred

1000- thousand

10000- ten thousand

100000- one hundred thousand

1000000- one million

1000000000- one billion

When working on international transactions it is quite common to see people scratching their heads trying to convert lakhs into millions or billions into crores. The complexity is only increased when there is an additional dimension of currency exchange. Change Indian Rupees into US Dollars and then figure out whether the lakhs work out to millions or billions.

My trick is always simple- write down the entire number on a paper and then draw lines across the digits dividing them into hundreds and thousands.

So for the longest ever time I thought that the only complexity that I would ever have to deal with were lakhs and crores vs the millions and the billions. Imagine my surprise when I started learning the numbers in Japanese and they have an additional level of complexity.

In their system this is how it foes

10- Ten (Ju)

100- Hundred (Hyaku)

1000- Thousand (Sen)

10000- Ten Thousand (Man)

100000000- One Hundred Million (Oku)

1000000000000- One trillion (tyoo)

So 15765432 would in India be One Crore Fifty Seven Laks Sixty Five Thousand Four Hundred and Thirty- Two

In the internationally accepted system 15765432 would be Fifteen Million Seven Hundred and Sixty-Five thousand Four Hundred and Thirty-two

And in Japan 15765432 would be One thousand five hundred and seventy-six ten thousands Five thousand four hundred and thirty-two.

Whew! And this is just how the units, tens and other numbers are classified- I’m not even talking about how the actual numbers are written (the famous tongue tripping French example of 99 being written as Eighty and Ten and Nine comes to mind!)

But the challenge is exactly what makes the whole domain interesting- what could make your brain more alert than having to translate or interpret a complex number in different systems?

And yet we see globalisation having its effects where more and more people start using millions and billions confining the lakhs and crores and mans and the okus to textbook theories.

They say that there are a number of languages that die within the world everyday- even within the languages we use there are so many unique features that disappear every day. Does this mean we have to mourn their loss?