• tiredofsametab@fedia.io
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    5 hours ago

    When I first moved to Japan, I had to use lots of websites that used untranslatable images (not text, like png or whatever and google lens was not a thing). I got help a few times and memorized what clicking on an area did more than even what the image was (which would change sometimes). This is how I got by with ATMs and various websites for quite a while. It works until something changes. Today, screen readers, google lens, and other things exist to help as well.

    • SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org
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      3 hours ago

      Sounds like just learning to read would be a better use of your time then. I mean if you already speak the language it should be fairly trivial, right?

      • tiredofsametab@fedia.io
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        3 hours ago

        I literally started with “When I first moved to Japan”.

        To answer your question, though, learning to read Kanji is not trivial especially when each one can have a number of different pronunciations or appear in compounds where the meaning can be quite different.

      • Redfox8@mander.xyz
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        3 hours ago

        You do realise that in Japan they don’t use Roman letters?! Sounds are one thing, a pictorial based writing system quite another! Just as in English, the same sounding word can mean several things, so the same spelt word can mean several things in Asian languages!