Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer)

9.6K posts

Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer)

@Sapmagic

Design Leader // Technical UX Expert - let's make shit! Previously Fantastic Pixel Castle, Riot (League, TFT, MMO). Love MMOs and RPGs, anime, cooking. 日本語いけます

Los Angeles, CA Joined Mayıs 2015

260 Following18.6K Followers

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Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer)@Sapmagic·3d

I started making Kanjimori to learn Japanese faster. Many kanji apps lean heavily into mnemonics to help you memorize characters, or teach you "radicals" that are based on visual similarity alone. These are both wrong (in my humble opinion!). 1/4

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Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer)@Sapmagic·1d

Kanji has undergone tons of mutation and transformation over many years, so there's definitely stuff that you Just Gotta Learn(tm), it becomes way less scary when you start to master the fundamentals. 4/4

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Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer)@Sapmagic·1d

If instead you look at the family tree, you can analyze and look for patterns, like if you think the person component in 休 (resting), 住 (master), 信 (belief), 働 (motion) is semantic or not. 3/4

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Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer)@Sapmagic·1d

Another cool thing you start to see when you map these big kanji family trees: forms. A lot of kanji can take on different shapes when they are used as components. Take 人 (person) for example. When it's used as a component it can become: 亻・儿・𠆢・勹 2/4

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Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer)@Sapmagic·3d

If you want test an early version of Kanjimori and help us make it into something truly special, drop us a line: forms.gle/Z4HkJfK5pmcwvq… 4/4

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Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer)@Sapmagic·3d

If instead you try to memorize the character as speech + five + mouth because that's what it looks like, you've memorized one character and gained nothing transferable. At the core, this is the fundamental truth that we think makes Kanjimori special. 3/4

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Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer)@Sapmagic·3d

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Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer)@Sapmagic·3d

My kanji learning app Kanjimori felt super rough for most of its life. That was ok, since it was just a for fun project to help me learn Japanese. Now that I'm getting closer to launching it, it makes me smile seeing the experience come together in a polished way. More soon.

GIF

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Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer)@Sapmagic·5d

I'm building a kanji app based on learning systematically through composition instead of mnemonics or brute-force memorization, and I'm looking for early testers to help me shape it! If you know kana but kanji feels like a wall for you, you'd be perfect! forms.gle/GQqdksCXP3BDsq…

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Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer)@Sapmagic·6d

@Atomicfreeze If you said anyone wanna get haircuts and then get Persian breakfast maybe 🤔

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Francisco@Atomicfreeze·21 Mar

Damn either engagement on here is 0 or no one wants to run

Francisco@Atomicfreeze

Anyone want to run 3-4 miles tomorrow morning in Venice/SM?

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Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer)@Sapmagic·26 Oca

@Kwepp If I’m a player and iterated on a custom UI over years, it seems understandable to be frustrated by needing to update or redo it, especially if I have misgivings about the approach the devs took. Some folks might be looking for reasons to quit, too.

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Kwepp@Kwepp·26 Oca

Gonna be real, seen a lot of posts along the likes of “I log in and then see I have to config my UI. I quit, Midnight is terrible” Yeah sure you gotta spend a few calories to make your UI but, this is a fresh start and era for the game and it’s not really that much effort tbh

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Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer)@Sapmagic·6 Oca

@N9mesis @MrDrProfRock @kushmeyer @naranciagaming In 行書, 「電」 becomes more like 8 strokes, and 草書 more like 2. Of course you can criticize the legibility. Same with cursive for me though - I find it much harder to read than printing!

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Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer)@Sapmagic·6 Oca

@N9mesis @MrDrProfRock @kushmeyer @naranciagaming It might be different where you live, but here in LA cursive is uncommon/unpopular. Speaking for myself, writing in cursive is slower. Maybe not so for a highly experienced user! Interesting though since it’s more efficient on paper. Similar 行書 and 草書 exist in Japanese too!

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narancia gaming@naranciagaming·3 Oca

so the guy that made the city levels in DOOM 2 is gonna lecture japan about good design

Sandy Petersen 🪔@SandyofCthulhu

The worst writing system in the world is Japanese, and it's not close. Even the Japanese are well aware. My childhood friend has worked as a Japanese-to-English translator in and out of Japan for 50 years and has plenty of dire stories. In the GIF below, there is a scene from Spirited Away in which when the witch removes the second syllable in her name, "Chihiro" is changed to "Sen". Which of course makes no sense because Japanese. My friend told me of a civil court case in America in which the attorney asked him how to pronounce a certain person's name, and he had to say, "I don't know." The attorney mocked his translation skills, and my friend explained that for much of Japanese Kanji, you cannot know the pronunciation until you hear it spoken, because there are multiple possibilities.

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Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer)@Sapmagic·4 Oca

@MrDrProfRock @kushmeyer @naranciagaming I agree that people can forget how to write characters and that remembering a partial spelling is definitely more useful than remembering part of a character in terms of communicating ideas. I don’t think that makes English efficient though.

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Rocky@MrDrProfRock·4 Oca

@sapmagic @kushmeyer @naranciagaming The burden of knowledge for CN/JP is far higher. A lot of the people I talked to while I was in Japan told me that they forgot how to write the characters and relied on their phones. It also takes longer to write full sentences due to the specific nature of Kanji (stroke order)

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Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer)@Sapmagic·4 Oca

@MrDrProfRock @kushmeyer @naranciagaming I’m dubious of this claim. Why do you think “whatever is conveyed” is more beautiful? Do you think that might be personal bias based on other people’s or your own glazing of Japanese culture? Or if not, I’m curious what makes it more beautiful subjectively.

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Rocky@MrDrProfRock·4 Oca

@sapmagic @kushmeyer @naranciagaming The upside is once you reach a certain level of literacy, whatever is conveyed is far more beautiful than anything I've seen written in English, the hard part is just getting there.

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Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer)@Sapmagic·4 Oca

@MrDrProfRock @kushmeyer @naranciagaming And would you agree that even if the knowledge required for proficiency is high, that doesn’t necessarily make it more or less efficient to read or write once the knowledge is acquired?

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Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer)@Sapmagic·4 Oca

@MrDrProfRock @kushmeyer @naranciagaming How much evidence is there behind the assertion that writing takes longer? Sure, writing a word in Japanese might take more strokes than a letter, but I’m not sure that holds up when comparing units of meaning. e.g., 電気 is 19 strokes, but electricity is comparable. And long.

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Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer)@Sapmagic·4 Oca

@MrDrProfRock @kushmeyer @naranciagaming I think to say it’s wholly less efficient is a broad claim requiring a lot of evidence. I’d love to hear more of yours!

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Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer)@Sapmagic·4 Oca

@MrDrProfRock @kushmeyer @naranciagaming Most kanji don’t have many readings, and readings are often guessable from phonetic components. For an experienced user, I think one could argue the Japanese writing system has many advantages vs other systems in terms of efficiency.

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