Posted by msephton 1 day ago
And so for "laughing a lot" people would write 'wwwwwwww'.
But then 'wwwwwwwwww' looks not unlike grass.
So now to say they're laughing a lot, they're using the real kanji for grass.
We went from 'w', a romanji used as a shortcut for a japanese word, to a kanji because, visually, many 'wwwwwwww' looked somehow like grass.
It's fascinating how in Japan the approach feels more visual. I mean: we may be doing similar things with our "romanji" (roman characters, as japanese calls them) but it's less common.
Speech / ideas / words: it's really something else.
Train station melody chimes are another great example — they differ by station and line, so locals unconsciously recognize which station they're at by sound alone, without reading anything.
There are countless other forms of "reading the air" throughout Japanese daily life. I'd genuinely recommend visiting Japan once to experience it firsthand.
Not one of the symbols can possibly be understood as to its intended meaning without learning what the symbol represents - that is to say, simply by looking at any of them in no way whatsoever suggests, hints, or shows their meaning in the appropriate context.
I don't think they meant that the symbols should be universally understood without need for explanation. That would be accomplished separately through some sort of public education campaign. In the case of the "help mark", they actually explain what it means in multiple languages in a big sign right above the priority seating [1].
All language has to be learned