Interested in advertising on Derpibooru? Click here for information!
The Travelling Pony Museum Shop!

Help fund the $15 daily operational cost of Derpibooru - support us financially!

Description

Ask GothTwi #59

Comments

Syntax quick reference: **bold** *italic* ||hide text|| `code` __underline__ ~~strike~~ ^sup^ %sub%

Detailed syntax guide

vonPeterhof
The End wasn't The End - Found a new home after the great exodus of 2012

@Ichijoe  
It’s just a stylistic choice. While 私 (watashi) is taught at school later than 変 (hen) and 態 (tai), the former character is used so frequently there’s no way a native Japanese speaker wouldn’t learn it simply by observation. There’s no law saying which words should be written with kanji and which ones shouldn’t (if she wanted to she could have written kusomushi as 糞虫) and some people like to avoid “overloading” their sentences with kanji, or think that katakana looks cooler.
 
And no, the shi’s are clearly シ and not ミ, no matter how sloppy the handwriting is. The lower stroke is obviously not parallel to the other two and it’s also sloping upwards on the right, not downwards. The fact that the other two strokes aren’t sloping downwards might have thrown you off, but this is done very often in order to make the character more distinct from ツ (tsu).
WM-R
Speaking Fancy - For helping with translations

@Daruqe  
It sometimes boils down to personal preference, really. In my experience, most people use kanji, but some prefer to write in hiragana or even katakana.
 
It could also be showing her foreign origins, but I think preference is more likely.
Ichijoe
Duck - Shills for Shillary

Perhaps Twi is still a baby pony that hasn’t learnt enough kanji yet?
 
Wooh boy wont that be fun having to learn and memorize thousands of different Characters that not only represent phonetic sounds in and of themselves, but are words in their own right…
Daruqe
Artist -

@Ichijoe  
Yeah, you were prolly confused because the way katakana シ was written here–sloppily. What I’d be confused about is why “watashi” is written in katakana here, and even I couldn’t give a coherent answer to that.
Background Pony #9A9D
@Ichijoe  
Shi is four (ichi, ni, san, shi/yon, go). It’s four that’s sometimes pronounced “yon” rather than “shi”, because “shi” can also mean “death”. And in written kanji, three (“san”) is 三, again a distinct character from katakana “mi” (ミ - note the sloping strokes).
Ichijoe
Duck - Shills for Shillary

But can’t Three be also written / spoken as shi?  
I seem to recall having learnt it went like
 
Ichi  
Ni  
Shi  
Son (yon)  
Go  
etc…
Background Pony #9A9D
@Ichijoe  
It’s just the handwriting making them slightly ambiguous, when they’re actually distinct characters. In katakana, shi is シ, and mi is ミ.
Ichijoe
Duck - Shills for Shillary

This is what I find confusing about kana.  
Lets take Shi. Is this not the same Character as Mi? I really don’t want to get into why Four and Seven have multiple Names as well. But just in the case of Shi. I think it has something again to do with Death. al-la Shinigami.
 
So why can I read that Charater as both Shi and or as Mi as in Miku (ミク)?