|
> 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. |
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