just like the “a” and “ɑ” fonts (iykyk), in japan is making beginers misunderstand Hiragana, especially in learning videos. there is り(ri) and in Japanese it has to be like the カタカナ ri (リ) with a little mark on the small line, same as き and さ, in desktop font, these two are normal. But in other font, the line break dissapear, the line breaks are connected, seriously.
Maybe You can skip this but I warn you to be careful when you are using wrong ひらがな if you are new to Japanese
The other style you refer to is the handwritten style. If you’re learning to write by hand, or read handwritten text, you’ll need to be familiar with the alternate versions. Same with some kanji.
I know, and i don’t even think fonts did this with kanji, I really think can somebody fix this issue, I read a lot of post on reddit like this
what fonts did to kanji is making japanese more complicated, I really hope they don’t change any hard word
I remember having more trouble distinguishing big and small kana in some cases, such as in the furigana in some manga. You read 突撃 and you want to look it up but you’re not sure if it’s とっげき or とつげき. When it’s written vertically it’s even trickier IMO.
Some kana have surprising variants in some fonts too, I remember not recognizing this variant of そ in a manga when I first encountered it:
I couldn’t make sense of it, I thought it could have been と or を or something like that.
Test
準備・満喫してください
\textsf{準備・満喫してください}
Kanji themselves also have variations, even if language is chosen correctly.
For Kana, そ and し may have two strokes, etc
Some Kanji variations can viewed in Jisho. I just don’t have a most obvious example in mind right now.
This is one of the main reasons I use Jitai, a userscript that randomizes the font for each item in your WaniKani reviews. When I first started reading, it took me a while to get used to the differences in the font, and I’d often get some kana mixed up when I tried looking up words. I haven’t read enough with non-standard fonts to see how much of a difference it makes, but I feel like I could get used to font variations more easily now.
Wanna do hard mode? Try understanding the stylized text that appears anywhere that you might see some cool Graphic Design text in a product from a culture using the Latin alphabet. E.g. album covers, soup cans, product logos, posters, music videos.
Like, is that シ or ツ in this stylized bit of a Kyary Pamyu Pamyu album art???
Actually, I imagine this must be a variant the same issue that native speakers of Chinese, Japanese or Korean might have with many fonts: for example, lowercase a and g are among the letters with possible variants depending on the font style.
For learning videos specifically, I think the teachers might except learners to be familiar with reading handwritten Kana, despite also seeing digitally typed Kana everywhere on the web and in comment section.
I am not sure if you can avoid this, even for English learning videos on a whiteboard classroom streaming…
