Quote:
(08:09:06 PM) Rob Oplawar: wtf
(08:09:08 PM) Rob Oplawar: i just saw a japanese commercial that could only be described as...
(08:09:11 PM) Rob Oplawar: normal
(08:09:43 PM) Rob Oplawar: i don't know what to make of this
(08:09:52 PM) Rob Oplawar: japanese commercials are normal
(08:10:02 PM) Rob Oplawar: and now american commercials are weird as fuck
(08:10:12 PM) Rob Oplawar: a wad of cash with eyeballs...
(08:10:56 PM) Kevin Lange: find it on youtube
(08:11:01 PM) Kevin Lange: and show it to me
(08:11:10 PM) Rob Oplawar: it was in japanese
(08:11:16 PM) Rob Oplawar: i don't know how to enter the search terms
(08:11:19 PM) Rob Oplawar: <_>
(08:11:26 PM) Kevin Lange: ...
(08:11:27 PM) Kevin Lange: bastard
(08:11:52 PM) Rob Oplawar: wait
(08:11:56 PM) Rob Oplawar: i think it may be korean
(08:12:10 PM) Kevin Lange: Did you see any hangul?
(08:12:18 PM) Rob Oplawar: is tudou korean or japanese?
(08:12:33 PM) Kevin Lange: chinese
(08:12:34 PM) Rob Oplawar: the characters look like they might be korean
(08:12:34 PM) Kevin Lange: durf
(08:12:38 PM) Rob Oplawar: oh
(08:12:39 PM) Kevin Lange: Tudou is CHINESE
(08:12:41 PM) Rob Oplawar: man
(08:12:42 PM) Rob Oplawar: i suck at this
(08:12:48 PM) Rob Oplawar: asians all look the same to me
(08:12:51 PM) Rob Oplawar: and their writing
(08:12:53 PM) Kevin Lange: omfg
(08:13:07 PM) Kevin Lange: Let me introduce you to Bacon's Guide to Differentiating Asian Typesets
(08:13:17 PM) Kevin Lange: There are four basic character types in the East Asian world:
(08:13:20 PM) Kevin Lange: - Katakana
(08:13:21 PM) Rob Oplawar: i see
(08:13:22 PM) Kevin Lange: - Hiragana
(08:13:24 PM) Kevin Lange: - Kanji
(08:13:25 PM) Kevin Lange: - Hangul
(08:13:28 PM) Rob Oplawar: squiggles arranged in blocks
(08:13:30 PM) Kevin Lange: Japan has the first three.
(08:13:37 PM) Kevin Lange: China has (and invented) Kanji.
(08:13:40 PM) Kevin Lange: And Korea uses Hangul.
(08:13:40 PM) Rob Oplawar: and as for asians themselves
(08:13:49 PM) Rob Oplawar: short black-haired people with squinty eyes
(08:13:52 PM) Kevin Lange: Katakana and Hiragana are used almost interchangeably to represent the same sounds.
(08:14:05 PM) Rob Oplawar: i'm bored now
(08:14:07 PM) Kevin Lange: They are phonetic letters and come in simple shapes.
(08:14:10 PM) Rob Oplawar: i'ma go back to watching st tng
(08:14:16 PM) Kevin Lange: Hiragana are curvy and based on very simplified Kanji.
(08:14:23 PM) Kevin Lange: Katakana are blocky, and simpler.
(08:14:53 PM) Kevin Lange: Kanji is very condensed, very complex figures ranging from just a dash -- (the number one) to 50-stroke abominations.
(08:15:10 PM) Kevin Lange: If you see lots of simple blocky or curvy lettering, it's Japanese.
(08:15:36 PM) Kevin Lange: If you see only complex figures (with the exception of the simple kanji figures like the numbers), then it's Chinese.
(08:15:40 PM) Kevin Lange: Hangul is special.
(08:15:49 PM) Kevin Lange: Hangul is much more like Latin, but it's arranged differently.
(08:16:04 PM) Kevin Lange: Hangul is used in blocks of four, read upper-left, upper-right, lower-left, lower-right.
(08:16:33 PM) Kevin Lange: (for the record, all east asian languages are left-to-right, top-to-bottom as of twenty years ago)
(08:16:45 PM) Kevin Lange: (Classical Chinese as well as signs may be read top-to-bottom, right-to-left, however).
(08:16:53 PM) Rob Oplawar: tl;dr
(08:16:56 PM) Kevin Lange: Hangul consists of simple block figures arranged in the four-corner pattern.
(08:17:08 PM) Kevin Lange: The most identifying Hangul character is a circle.
(08:17:17 PM) Kevin Lange: This is because none of the other character sets use circles.
(08:17:40 PM) Rob Oplawar: having fun talking to yourself?
(08:17:43 PM) Rob Oplawar: i'm not reading it
(08:17:49 PM) Kevin Lange: The circle is also part of common phonetics, so given a regular portion of text, you should be able to find at least one.
(08:18:08 PM) Kevin Lange: Even if you can't comprehend the four-corner block pattern, if you find a circle, it's Korean.
(08:18:23 PM) Kevin Lange: So there you have it.
And no, I didn't copy-paste any of my Guide to Differentiating Asian Typesets.