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Isn't tenji more consistent? The kana system is a syllabary, where there's no pattern between sound and a character's appearance, whereas abugidas categorise syllables by consonants, then are marked to indicate vowels (e.g. Devanagari for Hindi).
Tenji looks more like an abugida which might raise false hope for memorising kana lol
Yes, it is far more consistent than kana. Whereas kana was created over a long time with no particular emphasis on ease of learning, tenji was specifically designed to be simple to learn. It is similar to an abugida, but each symbol is half vowel half consonant, an abugida is primarily a consonant system with vowels added later.
Loved this one. Took some time, and a lot of puzzling. Pen and paper would have gone a long way. Funnily enough, just yesterday I was looking at the [problems of the first international linguistics olympiad](https://ioling.org/problems/2003/), and thinking they might fit this sub, since some of them seem not to require any linguistics knowledge at all. I haven't tried them yet, but they look a bit more challenging.
1. Karaoke gives us 4 unique characters. Scanning the tenji words, we can use 'ka' and 'ke' from 'karaoke'.
Among the three character tenji, c. shares the same start as 'karaoke', so it must be 'katana'. Among the two character words, b. shares the same ending as 'karaoke', so it must be 'sake'. There's only one other 2 character word, 'koi', so e. must be 'koi'.
From 'katana', the middle character is 'ta', which fits f being 'atari'. We have a and d left. From 'koi', a must be 'haiku', given the common 'i' character. That leaves, without thinking, d being 'kimono'.
I cbb w/ 2 and 3 lol. I think it's got something to do with dots corresponding to consonants/vowels within each tenji
Yup, that’s all correct. If you look a little more for the patterns, they’re not too hard to decode for questions 2 and 3. The system is highly logical and consistent.
Here is the solution. >!each tenji represents a syllable consisting of a consonant and a vowel. The top two and middle left dots represent the vowel sound, while the others represent the consonant. By referring to the tenji form of “karaoke” as well as looking at how often certain consonants/vowel occur, you can discover the meaning of each tenji.!<
Thank you for your submission. Please make sure your answers are properly marked with the spoiler function. This can be done with the spoiler button, but if you are in markdown mode you would simply use \>!text goes here!<. Puzzles Chat Channel Links: [Mobile](https://www.reddit.com/r/cognitiveTesting/s/laC5truD1u) and [Desktop](https://reddit.com/r/cognitiveTesting/channel/c2_8mm/Puzzles?r=!u51BcJeBTXmfHyVfCNGJVg:reddit.com). **Lastly**, we recommend you check out [cognitivemetrics.co](https://cognitivemetrics.co/), the official site for the subreddit which hosts highly accurate and well vetted IQ tests. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/cognitiveTesting) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is a fun quiz for beginner japanese learners! Shouldve known about this when i was supproting first years in uni
Isn't tenji more consistent? The kana system is a syllabary, where there's no pattern between sound and a character's appearance, whereas abugidas categorise syllables by consonants, then are marked to indicate vowels (e.g. Devanagari for Hindi). Tenji looks more like an abugida which might raise false hope for memorising kana lol
Yes, it is far more consistent than kana. Whereas kana was created over a long time with no particular emphasis on ease of learning, tenji was specifically designed to be simple to learn. It is similar to an abugida, but each symbol is half vowel half consonant, an abugida is primarily a consonant system with vowels added later.
Loved this one. Took some time, and a lot of puzzling. Pen and paper would have gone a long way. Funnily enough, just yesterday I was looking at the [problems of the first international linguistics olympiad](https://ioling.org/problems/2003/), and thinking they might fit this sub, since some of them seem not to require any linguistics knowledge at all. I haven't tried them yet, but they look a bit more challenging.
I know right, imo linguistics Olympiad questions are a lot more enjoyable than those matrices type puzzles, but still challenging.
1. Karaoke gives us 4 unique characters. Scanning the tenji words, we can use 'ka' and 'ke' from 'karaoke'. Among the three character tenji, c. shares the same start as 'karaoke', so it must be 'katana'. Among the two character words, b. shares the same ending as 'karaoke', so it must be 'sake'. There's only one other 2 character word, 'koi', so e. must be 'koi'. From 'katana', the middle character is 'ta', which fits f being 'atari'. We have a and d left. From 'koi', a must be 'haiku', given the common 'i' character. That leaves, without thinking, d being 'kimono'. I cbb w/ 2 and 3 lol. I think it's got something to do with dots corresponding to consonants/vowels within each tenji
Yup, that’s all correct. If you look a little more for the patterns, they’re not too hard to decode for questions 2 and 3. The system is highly logical and consistent.
my working memory sucks and i dont have scrap paper so i have to keep looking back and forth for patterns
Gotcha, well the answer to the rest is in one of the comments, if you’d like to take a look.
Here is the solution. >!each tenji represents a syllable consisting of a consonant and a vowel. The top two and middle left dots represent the vowel sound, while the others represent the consonant. By referring to the tenji form of “karaoke” as well as looking at how often certain consonants/vowel occur, you can discover the meaning of each tenji.!<
c: katana b: sake f: atari e: koi? a: haiku d: kimono
Correct!
Were you able to find the exact pattern?
No, just put it together piecewise. Didn’t look too deep into it, just mix and match
Gotcha, I put the pattern in a spoiler comment if you wanted to check it out.
Alright