
Is Technology Dumbing Down the Japanese Language? - rglovejoy
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/books/review/EParker-t.html
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potatolicious
"Is Technology Changing the Japanese Language?"

FTFY. Moralistic "them kids today" alarmism is generally unwarranted.
Evolution doesn't have a direction - it is merely change; to assign value
judgment to this change historically has turned out to be shortsighted.

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Deestan
I agree. I also think the annoying alarmism is caused by not identifying the
changes in intellectual habits.

For instance, in the past the high school math geeks all knew how to use a
slide rule, and mastering it was an intellectually satisfying task. Now that
slide rules have been replaced with calculators, the geeks instead know how to
solve quadratic and differential equations with a technical calculator, which
is an intellectually satisfying task to master.

The problem is that some of the "old school" can't really _see_ the new skills
and knowledge. They see only the lack of the old skills, and thus determine
that X has been dumbed down and the kids today don't learn anything hard
anymore.

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m0th87
People make the same argument with technology and English too, but that's not
going to stop language evolution.

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MikeMacMan
Is there a story here? I read the article twice and still don't understand
what's NY Times-worthy here...

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brazzy
Too lazy to subscribe. Is the gist "People can't write kanji anymore because
computer-assisted input requires only passive knowledge"? If so, that was old
news 20 years ago. Electrical typewriters were a _huge_ thing in Japan,
because mechanical ones could never produce the ~3000 characters they use.

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ilovecheese
> Too lazy to subscribe

If you don't have an account to read the NY Times I don't know whether I
should laugh at you or pity you. Maybe both.

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andyking
I've never had to subscribe to read the NY Times from Britain. Is it different
for overseas visitors?

