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29/1/15 23:48Sometimes I get bad Usenet flashbacks.
Once I asked on the main Japanese language study newsgroup, which had a fair number of linguists and language professors, about how to study kanbun. Kanbun is a way of writing Japanese as if it were Chinese that gets used in a lot of historical documents. I said in my post that my Japanese level was fairly high but not so fluent that I was totally comfortable reading the test prep books for high school students.
And in a remarkable case of "I don't understand the question you asked so I'm going to assume it's your fault," people started berating me for not knowing kanji. Kanji, the part of the modern Japanese writing system that I could understand reasonably well actually.
The thing is, there really aren't shortcuts when it comes to kanbun. If you're serious about studying premodern Japanese history at that level, you learn Chinese. So even when I got the right answer, it didn't feel great. But that's the kind of thing, I think, that's influenced how I see reference service - when you think it might be the wrong question, you keep asking and keep asking until you're sure you understand it and don't end up making people feel foolish.
Once I asked on the main Japanese language study newsgroup, which had a fair number of linguists and language professors, about how to study kanbun. Kanbun is a way of writing Japanese as if it were Chinese that gets used in a lot of historical documents. I said in my post that my Japanese level was fairly high but not so fluent that I was totally comfortable reading the test prep books for high school students.
And in a remarkable case of "I don't understand the question you asked so I'm going to assume it's your fault," people started berating me for not knowing kanji. Kanji, the part of the modern Japanese writing system that I could understand reasonably well actually.
The thing is, there really aren't shortcuts when it comes to kanbun. If you're serious about studying premodern Japanese history at that level, you learn Chinese. So even when I got the right answer, it didn't feel great. But that's the kind of thing, I think, that's influenced how I see reference service - when you think it might be the wrong question, you keep asking and keep asking until you're sure you understand it and don't end up making people feel foolish.