dolf@idca.tds.PHILIPS.nl (Dolf Grunbauer) (06/12/90)
In article <1990Jun10.213516.10053@agate.berkeley.edu> dankg@tornado.Berkeley.EDU (Dan KoGai) writes:
= Some of the Japanese can read
=200-page book within 5 minutes and this kind of thing is impossible for
=roman-script languages.
Are you sure ? I think I need at least 5 minutes to turn all pages. Do they
understand what they have read ?
--
Dolf Grunbauer Tel: +31 55 433233 Internet dolf@idca.tds.philips.nl
Philips Information Systems UUCP ...!mcsun!philapd!dolf
Some kind of happiness is measured out in milesrobert@cs.arizona.edu (Robert J. Drabek) (06/14/90)
Dolf Grunbauer writes: > Dan KoGai writes: > > Some of the Japanese can read > > 200-page book within 5 minutes and this kind of thing is impossible for > > roman-script languages. > > Are you sure? I think I need at least 5 minutes to turn all pages. Do they > understand what they have read? There doesn't appear to be any significant difference between the reading speed and comprehension of "ideograph" and "roman-script" readers. When I first started studying Chinese (which is where the Japanese borrowed for their Kanji) I was curious about a possible difference and could not find any studies which concluded either way. Talking to bilingual people whose native language was English and to those whose native language was Chinese, they were not able to say more than they were slightly faster in their first language. My own informal study was to (1) compare the "volume" of translations between Chinese and English works and (2) watch my wife (who only knew Chinese until the age of twenty-five) and in-laws read novels and newspaper articles in Chinese. For (1), there is little difference in the size and number of pages. For (2), they get through material (turning pages, finishing articles) at about the same rate I do (my reading speed is pretty typical for the "college graduate"). So after hoping to see that this system would be superior, I could not find anything to support my hypothesis. By they way, 200 pages in 5 minutes gives you 3 seconds to turn a page and read both faces. If written in English and with a density of 300 words per page, the reader is reading a 12,000 words per minute. Don't some of the speed-reading schools claim their methods capable of 2-3,000 words-per-minute rates? I feel that we are hitting if not exceeding comprehension abilities at this (2-3,000) rate. Dan KoGai's claim for Kanjii thus is off by a factor of 5 to 10 given even optimistic values in our equations. I missed the thread leading to the above, but roman-script readers don't read letters, they read entire words, and really word groups. Just as Kanjii readers don't read the "strokes" which make up the characters, but, rather, they read characters (roughly corresponding to words) and character groups. -- Robert J. Drabek robert@cs.Arizona.EDU Department of Computer Science uunet!arizona!robert The University of Arizona 602 621 4326 Tucson, AZ 85721
dankg@volcano.Berkeley.EDU (Dan KoGai) (06/16/90)
In article <777@ssp11.idca.tds.philips.nl> dolf@idca.tds.PHILIPS.nl (Dolf Grunbauer) writes: >Are you sure ? I think I need at least 5 minutes to turn all pages. Do they >understand what they have read ? Yes I am. For other people It just looks like they are just turning pages. What they are doing is imprint the whole page at once. There are training courses available in Japan. And I heard this quick reading scheme also exists in Korea. Dan Kogai (dankg@ocf.berkeley.edu)