[tkgally]

A bit off topic: I happened to talk with an editor at a large Japanese publishing company a few hours ago and the marketability of audiobooks came up. While audio versions of Japanese fiction and nonfiction books are produced and sold, he said the business has never really taken off and his own company isn’t interested in it anymore. This contrasts with what seems to be a healthy and growing audiobook market in English-speaking countries.

I speculated that the nature of Japanese writing might be one reason. Written Japanese can sometimes be hard to understand when read aloud, as a lot of meaning is conveyed by the written characters themselves—most often by the kanji used, which frequently distinguish between different words with the same pronunciation, but also by the stylistic choice of whether to write a word in hiragana, katakana, or kanji.

[frivoal]

I'd speculate differently. Americans commute by car, audiobooks are convenient to read while driving. Japanese commute by train, which is much more suitable to looking at a book (paper or electronic).

Also, Manga is massively popular, and that form doesn't covert well (or at all) to audiobook.

[tkgally]

> I'd speculate differently. Americans commute by car...

Actually, I mentioned that possibility to the editor, too, as I have often read about Americans listening to audiobooks in the car. His response was that where he is from, in Saitama Prefecture, most people commute by car, too, but while they listen to the radio they don’t listen to audiobooks. That was his impression, anyhow.

You’re right about manga, of course.

[Danieru]

I live in Saitama, I used to live in Canada. Thus I think the editor is blind to the differences.

In Canada you commute by driving fast along large roads, what would be highways in Japan. While in Saitama, and most of Japan car commutes, you drive on much smaller roads. You often need to stop for lights. At any time a moped might drive next to you in your own lane. Over all the experience leaves little attention to spare and the drive is never monotonous.

Meanwhile in Canada the driving was longer overall, and always with large stretchs at high speeds with no stopping once on the highway. Mopeds and motorbikes are not allowed to sneak by you. When the highway backs up you've find yourself driving for 30+ minutes without turning.

Saitama backs up too, but more because many intersections have no dedicated turning lanes. Thus a driving turning left will block everyone behind. When traffic is bad a couple intersections near my house often let no more than 3 cars per cycle through.

Personally I expect the audiobook market to be about the differences in commuting. On trains it is easier to read a book than to wear headphones. In cars your attention is constantly demanded.

In exchange commuting by car implies a shorter commute. I can commute into the core of Tokyo from Saitama in only 30 minutes. Parking costs 30 dollars for the day, and highway tolls cost 14 dollars in total, but it saves me otherwise unbillable time and thus makes sense for my situation.

[mcc1ane]

Japanese-speaking people have trouble understanding each other?

[tkgally]

> Japanese-speaking people have trouble understanding each other?

Probably no more so than speakers of other languages.

What I meant is that written Japanese often conveys information that will be lost if the text is read aloud as it is written, as words written differently are often pronounced the same.

English has similar cases, such as “right,” “write,” and “rite.” But Japanese has many, many more. For example, the words 壮観, 送還, 相姦, 相関, 相観, 挿管, 創刊, and 総監 are all pronounced sōkan, but they mean, respectively, a grand sight, repatriation, incest, correlation, physiognomy, intubation, start of publication, and inspector general. When the words are seen, their meaning is immediately clear. When they are heard, the listener must infer which meaning is intended from the context, and often the context is insufficient.

Radio announcers, when reading aloud a text, will sometimes explain the kanji with which a word was written. Audiobook narrators probably don’t feel they have the authority to do so.

[yongjik]

> 壮観, 送還, 相姦, 相関, 相観, 挿管, 創刊, and 総監

It's not a fair comparison (because these are chosen to be homonyms in Japanese), but interestingly, all but one of them are also regular Korean words and they all sound different:

> janggwan, songhwan, sanggan, sanggwan, (unused), sapgwan, changgan, chonggam

[PEJOE]

I think he is saying that in writing, Japanese allows you to be expressive in ways that take advantage of the written medium, and a spoken version of the same text loses those text-only expressive features.

[kazinator]

Yes, they absolutely do. You have to see it to believe it.

The language is full of homonyms, for instance.

Misunderstandings occur and then there is a back and forth along the pattern of "No, I don't mean the GENSHI (原子, atom) of GENBAKU (原爆, atom bomb). I mean GENSHI (原資, capital) as in SHIKIN (資金, funds). Okane no koto (having to do with money)." "Aaa... naruhodo".

They also often cannot read the names of people and places. It is simply not possible. If you don't know, the best you can do is form several plausible hypotheses, all of which could be incorrect due to some semi-arbitrary assignment.

[glandium]

What other sibling comments is true, but it's worth noting that there are cases where spoken Japanese can be ambiguous, and people disambiguate by... mimick-writing in their palm with their finger.

[Nullabillity]

Sounds more like a divergence between written and spoken Japanese.

[resoluteteeth]

Audiobooks were a fairly niche market in the US until extremely recently, which is why Audible was able to come in and take over a huge percentage of the market share.

Audible also seems to be doing ok in Japan now so it's probably way to early to attribute the relative popularity of audiobooks to any property of the language.