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Novels Composed on Cellphones Topping Japanese Best Seller Lists
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Jan 20, 2008 05:38 AM
from the tiny-text-long-tail dept.
from the tiny-text-long-tail dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times has up an article examining the rise of blogs/novels that make the transition to published books. Recent Japanese best-seller lists have been heavy with these texts, many of them actually written on cellphones for a cellphone reading audience. Commentators note the popularity of this form of literature coincides with cell providers moving to unlimited data packages. 'The affordability of cellphones coincided with the coming of age of a generation of Japanese for whom cellphones, more than personal computers, had been an integral part of their lives since junior high school. So they read the novels on their cellphones, even though the same Web sites were also accessible by computer. They punched out text messages with their thumbs with blinding speed, and used expressions and emoticons, like smilies and musical notes, whose nuances were lost on anyone over the age of 25.'"
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cellphone novels (Score:5, Funny)
Re:cellphone novels (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing is, Japanese is far easier to enter on a keypad phone than English, meaning short-cuts like you see in English are not required. In fact due to the predictive text software, using weird language slows down typing speeds. Predictive text software also works a lot better with Japanese than it does with English. Well used phrases and sentences can be reduced to just a few key-presses and the average word, around 3-7 key presses (~2 characters). The result is the ability to write a 30-50 character reply email, with decent grammar within 1 minute or so.
BTW that 25yrs age limit is way off-mark. The youngsters maybe faster than the rest of us, but everyone uses smiles, as well as a selection of graphical images available with the phone. I've even got them from my mother-in-law, who is way past the official retirement age.
Parent
Re:cellphone novels (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think its really any easier, just that Japanese have to use "predictive text" type input methods on computers too, so its the same interface for them, just with fewer keys. For English speakers, its a whole different way of inputting, that many people still can't get their heads around. The fastest English txters I know turn off predictive text, because they think it slows them down, I think in reality it is just that they can't change their mindset from typing everything out manually to letting a dictionary do the work.
Parent
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The thing about japanese, is that you can represent much more information in a compact way and it is easier to predict what kind of words/structure come next. If I'd like to say "I don't want to go to a maid cafe today.", it would be written as "kyou MEIDOKAFUe ni ikitakunai".
The first word you'll get immediately by typing in the "ki" kana, since "ki" in the start of a sentence is v
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Re:cellphone novels (Score:5, Informative)
To give you an idea of what it's like to text in Japanese using predictive text entry, here's a kind of walk through the process.
First you type a character. Each character in Japanese is a phoneme/syllable (called a mora). The phone gives you a list of about 15 words that might fit. It's really amazing how often those fifteen words are right. Even if they aren't, by the next character, you almost always have the word.
Then the phone gives you a list of particles/sentence fragments. Almost every word in Japanese is followed by a particle - a single character word that indicates the grammatical function of the previous word. But since there aren't that many particles. they usually have room to give you a couple of common sentence fragments that could also fit in that context where you were typing; usually common grammatical constructions. You choose the one you want.
Then you type a character for a word again. You keep doing this until you get to a verb (usually at the end). At that point the software give you a choice of "okurigana" which will allow you to choose the inflection (sort of like a conjugation) and politeness level of the verb/sentence. And you are done.
You can type whole sentences in only a few keystrokes. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if people can type faster on their cellphone than they can on their computer. It really is that easy and convenient.
Parent
Re:cellphone novels (Score:5, Funny)
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That's the Japanese for You (Score:4, Funny)
Well, that and Slashdot.
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Now, would you care to actually address the point made in the post you were replying to? Are you going to stand up in public, preferably not posting anonymously, and explain why you believe it is not racist to throw around unsupported accusations
Not difficult with the right equipment (Score:3, Interesting)
I write novels ... (Score:2)
Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Informative)
From what I hear they're awful. A lot are written by high school students, according to my coworker, and he personally found them rather stupid and boring. But he recommended them to me as a way to pick up contemporary spoken Japanese.
That said it's not because they're composed on cellphones that makes them interesting - they originally were cellphone downloads, if I am not mistaken. So a lot of people downloaded them when they had nothing else to do and read them during down time. Plus I think they tend to probably appeal to the high school set (in regard to themes, style, etc).
Parent
With Apologies to /. (Score:5, Funny)
nuances (Score:3, Funny)
> nuances were lost on anyone over the age of 25.'"
Or with an IQ over 25. Nuances? How is a smiley a nuance?
I fell in love. I felt like this
After Reading This... (Score:2)
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actually came up at work last week (Score:5, Interesting)
The books aren't brilliant works of art by any stretch of the imagination, from what I've gathered, but are mostly for people to read on their phones when there is nothing else going on (train rides, etc.). But like my coworker said they are probably a brilliant way to pick up contemporary Japanese; the writing style is that of young people today and the kanji used are a lot less (because these are high school kids not Akutagawa).
The dark side of this, however... (Score:2)
for the love of god and all that is holy, stop texting me.
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(Sorry, couldn't contrive the mobile phone into this lame reply).