Goetterwind

Goetterwind t1_j73utql wrote

I don't know if your reply is a criticism on my comment, so maybe I was not exact enough about the differences of traditional/simplified Chinese vs. Kanji. You can correct me, if I am wrong, as my knowledge of Chinese is (extremely) limited, but I have been several times to Japan. So this is bascially my (limited) knowledge from about 12 years ago.

Concerning the Chinese characters vs. Japanese Kanji: There is traditional and simplified Chinese, yes. The traditional Chinese had several reforms, the major ones about 210BC and starting from 1949 another one (leading to the simplifed Chinese being formely adapter in 1964 afaik). However in between these major dates, obviously a bunch of other quite minor adaptations happened (as in every language and writing) - however it is mostly static. The reforms tried to simplify writing, but there are some runnning gags nowadays, like 'the simplified love lacks the heart'...

There are traditional Kanji and (after WW2 some modifications - leading to the 'shinjitai'?) modern Kanji. However, the set of trad. Kanji are derived from roughly the 5th century AD (mainly due to Buddhist texts and trade, as Japan had no writing system) and there are additional characters Japanese-only kanji that form the so-called 'kukoji'. Those kanji don't have an on'yomi (Chinese) spelling, as they are not 'from China' - but obviously kun'yomi (Japanese spelling). An example is 込 ...

But as a fun twist of history, some Japanese kanji were even absorbed back into traditional Chinese so they 'gained' an on'yomi spelling!

But it does not end here - some kanji even have a different on'yomi as you would expect from their traditional Chinese counterpart, mainly due to the fact that they are not derived from Mandarin, but some other dialects. Some are some exapmles of different meanings, the most commonly known being 手纸/手紙 (Shouzhi? Sorry for buthering this) meaning 'toilet paper' in Chinese and 手紙 (tegami) meaning 'letter' in Japanese.

So yes, Kanji are to the vast majority traditional Chinese characters, but with some slight twist.

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Goetterwind t1_j72cbv9 wrote

Yes and no. Chinese is even more limited in sound. Both however write the corresponding Chinese sign onto their hand during conversation in order to facilitate communication. Hiragana was a writing system for women (they were not allowed to use Kanji) in order to be able to write, while katakana comes from a sect in order to make sense out of the Buddhist texts written in Chinese. Both languages are fundamentally different...

In Japanese there is actually no need for the Kanji imo, but it would make the language much much muuuuch more complicated to write...

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Goetterwind t1_j7192lr wrote

The Kanji used in Japanese are basically the old school versions of the traditional Chinese characters. There are even specific Japanese Kanji. So while technically they are of the same origin as the Chinese ones, they are not exactly the same nowadays and back then (they are very close to traditional Chinese, though) Afaik.

it makes no sense to eliminate them, as they are 'distinctive' enough. You also have to understand that every fascist Ideology heavily relies on religion, heroism and tradition. You cannot rely on traditional values, if you kill the historical inscription, seals and so on.

How do you want to explain to the common people that their emperor, the direct descendent of God, now has to write his name in the peasant signs? ;)

Would you give up the Arabic numbers, the Hindu '0', the Latin alphabet even if you hate them all? I don't think so, as they are such old, that they are basically a part of your own identity, history and culture.

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Goetterwind t1_irt1bfy wrote

The critical design flaw was the tip of the control rods, which were made of graphite. The reactor was Xe-poisoned and was running at about 30MW, where it is unstable. It was ordered to increase power, but it would have been better to wait 24h to get rid of the poisoning.

So with almost all the rods out they came to about 200MW,but super instable. They tried to shut down and slammed the red button. The graphite tips actually increased reactivity and the explosion occurred (hydrogen/steam).

The fundamental flaw was to get people in charge that had no idea how the reactor worked and where and why it is dangerous.

As always - for an accident to happen, several things had to go wrong. And here they did.

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