# Are Kanji truly necessary for the Japanese language?



## Todessprache

For centuries literature was produced with the phonetic hirigana syllabary; I think it is clear that Kanji are not truly necessary for the writing of Japanese or for that matter of Chinese. Ideograms, whatever their advantages, are simply more cumbersome, unwieldy and laborious than an alphabetic writing system not to mention not necessary. There is the argument concerning homophones but many languages have homophones and get by just fine without ideograms. 

What do you think?


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## Wishfull

Hello, Todessprache.

For me, it is very difficult to read only hiragana (not hirigana) sentence. It takes much more time to read.
With Kanji we can get much information and more quickly.
Kanji is very useful and we can't do without kanji.
For example; We definitely need Kanji in Caption of English movies. We can't read fast enough if there is only hiragana.

By the way, we judge people's education level by the degree of using kanji.
It is just like you judge education level by the vocaburary, usage, mis-spelling or grammar. 
Like this reply, I think I can convey my message with only my fundermental words.
But you know that I'm not native of English. 
Why?
You can know by my grammatical errors, by my usage errors, by my un-natural-ness of sentences?
You might judge by my vocaburary.  (For example, I have to look for the dictionary about "ideogram")
Is it the same thing?

I don't want to stay this situation. I want to learn more about English. I want to increase my vocaburary.
I want to become a fluent speaker or writer of English.

If you use only hiragana, you are thought that you are a child under the age of 7,
or you are extraodinary uneducated for ceratain reasons, or you are mentally ill, or you are non-native and the beginner of Japanese learner.

If you are Japanese and an adult who uses only hiragana, we treat you with caution, because you might be mentally ill.
If you are a foreigner who uses only hiragana we treat you politely, because you are non-native, and we know your language level of Japanese is very low. We use only fundermental words because we think it is impossible for you to understand high level Japanese.
We treat you as a beginner.

If you are OK to be treated like such a beginner, you can stay in hiragana level. We can communicate with easy words.
But if you want to be treated even, I think you have to study Japanese Kanji.
And you will learn that without kanji you can't go further level of understanding Japanese.

My conclusion is that it is a matter of pride in a sense.
Low level communication might be possible only using hiragana and not using kanji.
But not high level.

This is my personal thinking. 
I don't know how other natives think.


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## Todessprache

xxx

For thousands of years Korean used Kanji as well with the same arguments. You can learn the Korean alphabet in a matter of hours and you can read it very quickly. I agree that it is a matter of pride, not logic or reason that the Japanese retain Kanji. _Genji Monogatari _was written in Hirigana. My only point is that ideograms are not necessary.


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## SpiceMan

No, kanji are not necessary. 

The written system used doesn't mean it is necessary for the language itself. Just as people can speak it without knowing how to read nor write. Most languages of precolumbian civilizations didn't have a written system, but were/are full-fledged languages, in every senses. A written system doesn't define a language, is just an attempt to transcribe it.

About the election of a particular written system, I don't really think there is much about it that can be discussed, since although there are lots of factors (including historical, cultural and economical ones), the election of one writing system over another is -in the end- pretty much arbitrary, in my opinion.

That said, once you get used to kanji, reading Japanese in romaji or hiragana only is really cumbersome and tiring, even for non-natives like myself.


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## Todessprache

xxx

At least you admit it is not necessary...


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## Outsider

There are advantages to ideograms, too:

They provide short symbols for complex concepts. We use this sometimes in western languages, too, for instance in road signs.

They are "international", in that they don't depend much on accent, dialect, or even language to some extent. As long as you are familiar with the writing system, it makes little difference how you speak. This way, you can read texts written in faraway places or in past centuries without too much difficulty.

One might ask instead if phonetic writing is truly necessary.


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## Todessprache

Outsider said:


> There are advantages to ideograms, too:
> 
> They provide short symbols for complex concepts. We use this sometimes in western languages, too, for instance in road signs.
> 
> They are "international", in that they don't depend much on accent, dialect, or even language to some extent. As long as you are familiar with the writing system, it makes little difference how you speak. This way, you can read texts written in faraway places or in past centuries without too much difficulty.
> 
> One might ask instead if phonetic writing is truly necessary.


 
Hmm...

The Myth of Indispensability.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result

Read texts in far away places? A Chinese man could venture a few hundred kilometers away and discover a sign he has no idea how to pronounce describing a small city. Or any other geographic location. 

I have a test for Chinese people I got from someone. I ask them if they can remember how to write the character 'sneeze'. Usually they cannot. 
Koreans used Kanji for ages and got rid of it; their alphabet works astoundingly well. 

http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html


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## Outsider

Todessprache said:


> Read texts in far away places? A Chinese man could venture a few hundred kilometers away and discover a sign he has no idea how to pronounce describing a small city. Or any other geographic location.


The point is that knowing how to pronounce a word is not always the most important. It seldom is. Usually, understanding the meaning is what matters most. 



Todessprache said:


> I have a test for Chinese people I got from someone. I ask them if they can remember how to write the character 'sneeze'. Usually they cannot.


That is interesting.



Todessprache said:


> Koreans used Kanji for ages and got rid of it; their alphabet works astoundingly well.


Is it your position that _katakana_ should also be scrapped?


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## Todessprache

Outsider said:


> The point is that knowing how to pronounce a word is not always the most important. It seldom is. Usually, understanding the meaning is what matters most.
> 
> That is interesting.
> 
> Is it your position that _katakana_ should also be scrapped?


 
No. But here is the dilemma. Someone tells me the word for 'bowl' in Chinese at a beginner level. I hear the word and it is impossible to even guess what it might be written. I am a beginner of Portuguese and I can make a very decent guess. On a rational scale the advantages are outweighed by the disadvantages.


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## Flaminius

Hello,


Todessprache said:


> For centuries literature was produced with the phonetic hirigana syllabary;


What literature was produced with hiragana only?  Was it so continuous as to be called a tradition of centuries?  How representative was it of the overall landscape of the contemporary language.



Todessprache said:


> _Genji Monogatari _was written in Hirigana.


The original _Genji Monogatari_—if at all it was committed on paper with a definitive text—is not extant.  The oldest manuscripts are 500 to 700 years old.  They use kanji, even though hiragana is used more extensively. 



> My only point is that ideograms are not necessary.


It is not necessary as much as the "illogical" English orthography.  Development of systems, however, is not dictated by teleological rationality.  In some point in the history hiragana-only writing system may have been viable, but, once the three-script system was established, the inertia is so strong that no other system can supplant it.  From a historical perspective, therefore, the Japanese scripts are a necessary product of numerous factors.



Outsider said:


> There are advantages to ideograms, too:
> 
> They provide short symbols for complex concepts. We use this sometimes in western languages, too, for instance in road signs.


Shorter texts are economical in all senses of the word.  I just counted the number of kanji used in a newspaper article.  Out of 260 or so characters (by the way, calling an instance of Japanese scripts character comes across very weird), 53% was kanji.  Each kanji represented 1.75 or so hiragana characters.  Assuming the same figures for a 300-page novel, an all-hiragana version of the same book is bloated to 400 pages.  Publishing houses will be very pleased.


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## Todessprache

Flaminius said:


> Hello,
> 
> What literature was produced with hiragana only? Was it so continuous as to be called a tradition of centuries? How representative was it of the overall landscape of the contemporary language.
> 
> 
> The original _Genji Monogatari_—if at all it was committed on paper with a definitive text—is not extant. The oldest manuscripts are 500 to 700 years old. They use kanji, even though hiragana is used more extensively.
> 
> 
> It is not necessary as much as the "illogical" English orthography. Development of systems, however, is not dictated by teleological rationality. In some point in the history hiragana-only writing system may have been viable, but, once the three-script system was established, the inertia is so strong that no other system can supplant it. From a historical perspective, therefore, the Japanese scripts are a necessary product of numerous factors.
> 
> 
> Shorter texts are economical in all senses of the word. I just counted the number of kanji used in a newspaper article. Out of 260 or so characters (by the way, calling an instance of Japanese scripts character comes across very weird), 53% was kanji. Each kanji represented 1.75 or so hiragana characters. Assuming the same figures for a 300-page novel, an all-hiragana version of the same book is bloated to 400 pages. Publishing houses will be very pleased.


 
English orthography is dreadful. It should have been changed to accommodate the sound shifts that occurred. Read the links I sent. I am not arguing that anything will change nor that it even should change (in Japan change is sort of an oxymoron), but that a much more efficient system could replace it and that it is NOT necessary. I learnt the Hangeul alphabet in less than a day. I will never learn the thousands and thousands upon characters necessary to become literate in an educated sense in Japanese and Chinese. You could master three mid-level difficulty European languages in the time it would take to learn the requisite Kanji. Certainly no one is going to argue that memorising thousands of unphonetic logograms is a very economical thing. They say this after they spent the better part of their entire childhood, 2 decades or so, in order to be able to read a newspaper article. Example; my syntax professor is Japanese and is raising his son in England. He is growing up bilingually but is illiterate in Japanese and can read well in English. So he will grow up speaking fluent Japanese unable to write it. That just seems like such a strange thing to me.


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## Flaminius

Todessprache said:


> but that a much more efficient system could replace it and that it is NOT necessary.


Define efficiency and necessity for a writing system.



> They say this after they spent the better part of their entire childhood, 2 decades or so, in order to be able to read a newspaper article. Example; my syntax professor is Japanese and is raising his son in England. He is growing up bilingually but is illiterate in Japanese and can read well in English. So he will grow up speaking fluent Japanese unable to write it. That just seems like such a strange thing to me.


Japanese school system takes 12 years to make a student able to read all newspaper articles (many are much easier).  I assume British system takes just as much time, during which students learn artificial and abstract concepts such as taxation, beauty, individual and democracy.  The extra work for Japanese students is that they have to learn how each word/concept is written down.  The Japanese language itself can be learnt without scripts but scripts themselves are a different universe of combinations of _signifiants_ and _signifiés_.

The case of your professor's son is interesting in that he is fully exposed to one universe of symbols but has little to do with the other universe.  How much his Japanese advances will be seen in the degree of importance of the Japanese writing system to what language is in an ordinary sense.


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## Todessprache

I am addressing this to the last post since quoting is not tolerated here.

Yes, written Japanese and spoken Japanese are independent phantoms. Is that a good thing?

So at age 18 a Japanese person can read a newspaper?


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## Flaminius

Todessprache said:


> Yes, written Japanese and spoken Japanese are independent phantoms. Is that a good thing?


 Is that a bad thing?  Is it only for Japanese?  Michel Foucault had a lot to say about how bad the European tradition of placing spoken words over written words was.  Maybe we'd better refrain from value judgements in this linguistic discussion?



> So at age 18 a Japanese person can read a newspaper?


Officially, yes.


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## Todessprache

> Is that a bad thing? Is it only for Japanese? Michel Foucault had a lot to say about how bad the European tradition of placing spoken words over written words was. Maybe we'd better refrain from value judgements in this linguistic discussion?


 
No value judgements here, merely judgements of efficiency. Bad in terms of efficiency. I already told you that the English orthographical system is horrible. It is the result of sound changes which began in the 15th century and were concluded in the 18th century. When William Caxton put the first English words in print in 1476 he kept the known system. Future editors and lexographers did not make the effort to change this and now we are stuck with the junk.


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## Juuuergen

I think Japanese kanji are very efficient! Sure, they may take a little longer to learn, but reading is much quicker afterward. 

You say that in the time it would take to learn Japanese kanji you could learn 3 European languages - well, perhaps you could (I seriously doubt it, but perhaps). Well, Thomas Edison could've invented numerous other inventions in the time it took him to invent the light bulb, but the fact is that he invented the light bulb. Now all we have to do is flip a switch to get light. I find this analogous to the Japanese and their kanji; it takes them longer to learn their system, but I think it is much more fruitful. 

And hey, I think it's working for them - after all, many tests show that Japanese students are among the most intelligent in the world and the Japanese economy is one of the strongest in the world. 

And in regards to your last post - who cares? It has been working for us for hundreds of years, spelling changes or no spelling changes. Every language has its quirks - this is one of the English quirks. I don't look at it and see problems - I look at it and see expression.


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## Todessprache

It is a total nonsequitur to claim that there is some correlation between Kanji and IQ or that Kanji has some relationship with the Japanese economy. The Japanese economy is strong and has high saving rates because it is highly protectionist in nature. This has nothing to do with Kanji.

Let us say it takes 10 years to learn enough Kanji to to be considered highly educated, meaning you can reproduce say 5000 from memory. In that time I can guarantee you I could gain written and spoken fluency in Italian, Spanish and Dutch. I reckon anyone could.


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## Juuuergen

Total sequitur, huh? Perhaps you mean "non sequitur"? 

Anyway, I think there is a correlation. If you can absorb information faster, you have more time to absorb other information. For instance, which is faster to process? 57,307,211 or fifty-seven million, three hundred thousand and seven, two hundred and eleven? You could read several more numbers before even finishing that one.

Moreover, cognitive psychology could tell you that they process this information in a different way then we process our Roman alphabet; their cognitive schemata are different. This leads to looking at the world in different ways, and anyone in the business world can tell you that originality means good business. 

Now when we're talking about Japanese in relation to other languages, I don't think that's true. I've studied a number of languages - French, German, Spanish, Polish, and now Japanese. Notice that all of these languages are European save Japanese. I can tell you from experience that Japanese just as easy as German and Polish - it's just a different mindset. Perhaps your mind doesn't fit into this mindset as quickly as you'd like it to.


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## Todessprache

A different mindset?  I am not complaining about the grammar and I am not talking about 'just speaking'; I am talking about a mastery that would enable you to read the equivalent of Goethe or Hugo with ease. That kind of mastery is made all the more difficult by the Kanji.


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## Starfrown

I think it is perhaps worth noting that the writing system was simplified a great deal after WWII, so that now a knowledge of only about 2000 characters (many of them simplified from the traditional Chinese forms) will get you through most texts with relative ease.


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## Todessprache

Starfrown said:


> I think it is perhaps worth noting that the writing system was simplified a great deal after WWII, so that now a knowledge of only about 2000 characters (many of them simplified from the traditional Chinese forms) will get you through most texts with relative ease.


 
China also simplified their Kanji in the 20th century. I think these are hints.


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## COF

Wishfull said:


> by the way, we judge people's education level by the degree of using kanji.



To an extent that fact backs up his position on why Kanji is unnecessary. The Japanese obviously must judge education levels and probably intelligence levels on the amount of Kanji the person is able to use because Kanji are inheritently hard to learn and hard to remember.

In my opinion, as beautiful as the Kanji may be, I feel it is an antiquated, primitive way of writing which is crazy to use when the Japanese have a perfectly good native phonetic script. The idea that someone would be unable to fully comprehend a newspaper until the age of 18 and had been through full comprehensive schooling strikes me as very odd and to an extent social exclusion. 

Of course, nowadays, Japan is a very educated society with a high literacy rate, however, I'm sure like all countries, there are a few citizens who slip through the net, prehaps drop out of school early or maybe never go to school at all and these people are effectively left illiterate with no way out due to the fact the writing system uses a primitive, very hard to learn script in favour of a phonetic script.


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## Juuuergen

A different mindset indeed! Some people work better with ideograms, some people work better with alphabets.


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## Starfrown

COF said:


> In my opinion, as beautiful as the Kanji may be, I feel it is an antiquated, primitive way of writing which is crazy to use when the Japanese have a perfectly good native phonetic script.


One of the earlier posters noted that reading Japanese without Kanji can be a bit of a hassle. I agree. It is much more difficult to identify word boundaries without them. When we see Kanji, we can be fairly sure that we are seeing a noun (or a noun functioning adverbially), an adjectival stem, or a verbal stem; they make the inflectional endings and function-words (namely, particles) stand out very strongly in contrast. Those who have not studied Japanese for very long may not be able to sympathize.

We must also not forget their semantic value. Very often, I am able to guess the meaning of a word, or at least get a fairly good idea of what it means, from the characters used to write it.

Kanji are not at all "primitive," and they are perhaps much more logical than some here are suggesting. Let us not forget that the majority of characters are formed simply by different combinations of a relatively small number of radicals (in roughly the same way that words are formed from alphabetic characters). For instance, 山 is "mountain," 上 is "up,"下 is "down," and 峠 is "mountain pass." Indeed, they are not all this simple logically, but creating more complex characters from simpler elements is the norm. As a more typical example, 手 is hand, 寺 is temple, and 持 is "hold/have"; in this case, the element on the left--the "hen" radical--gives us a hint as to the meaning, while the element on the right--the "tsukuri" radical--tells us that the character 持 likely has the same "on-yomi" as 寺. (Note that even the character 寺 can be broken down into 土 and 寸.) According to one estimate, roughly 85% of the characters are semasio-phonetic, meaning that they indicate _both_ meaning and Chinese-derived pronunciation, or "on-yomi."
 
Are they absolutely necessary? Probably not, but there are at least some advantages to their limited use.


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## Flaminius

Todessprache said:


> No value judgements here, merely judgements of efficiency. Bad in terms of efficiency.


I have already taken the liberty of asking what you mean by efficiency.  An economist may be able to calculate the primary balance of the language community, weighing the plus side of less space, paper, bytes (about 75% of an all-hiragana system) for all written materials against the minus side of extra years of education before students attain to fully functional literacy (the latter must be a few years as an English-speaking 12-year-old can read but won't understand newspaper articles as adults do).



COF said:


> Of course, nowadays, Japan is a very educated society with a high literacy rate, however, I'm sure like all countries, there are a few citizens who slip through the net, prehaps drop out of school early or maybe never go to school at all and these people are effectively left illiterate with no way out due to the fact the writing system uses a primitive, very hard to learn script in favour of a phonetic script.


One article about dyslexia places the Japanese per capita ratio of dyslexic persons at a quarter to a half of that in USA.  Though not a definitive study by all means, it casts doubts that associating "primitiveness" with cognitive difficulties may be a culturally biased concept.


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## COF

Flaminius said:


> One article about dyslexia places the Japanese per capita ratio of dyslexic persons at a quarter to a half of that in USA.  Though not a definitive study by all means, it casts doubts that associating "primitiveness" with cognitive difficulties may be a culturally biased concept.



I wasn't necessarily saying the illiterate person used in my example was dyslexic, or had any similar learning disability. For example, while a very, very small number, there are a few middle aged people in the UK who have simply never learnt to read, there was a programme on about a group of middle aged people being taught to read for the first time. While of course English poses a problem because it makes just about the most unphonetic usage of an alphabet you could possibly imagine, they seemed to be struggling getting to grips with reading an alphabet script, and I can't remember how long it took them to get their reading to a proficient level, but none of them found it easy at all. 

If you take this scenario to Japan, from how I see it, it would be an absolutely nightmare trying to teach a middle aged Japanese person to read. If it was just Kana that needed to be learnt, then there would be no problem, but as they would have to learn at least several 100 Kanji to be the slightest bit literate, it would take forever and would be very frustrating for the learner. 

But this is obviously not a common scenario, and probably 99% of Japan have a resonable level of literacy, but I'm sure, just like the UK there are a few people who have never learnt to read but don't neccessarily have any learning difficulties. I think if you were a person in Japan who had never learnt to read at a young age, unless you were extremely motivated I don't think you ever would mainly because of the sheer number of Kanji one would have to learn and remember.


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## Todessprache

COF said:


> But this is obviously not a common scenario, and probably 99% of Japan have a resonable level of literacy, but I'm sure, just like the UK there are a few people who have never learnt to read but don't neccessarily have any learning difficulties. I think if you were a person in Japan who had never learnt to read at a young age, unless you were extremely motivated I don't think you ever would mainly because of the sheer number of Kanji one would have to learn and remember.


 
Kind of like the example of the bilingual son of my professor. He is illiterate in Japanese but speaks it fluently.


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## mr_anderson

One has to admit that you got a point in saying that it would be much easier to just learn a phonetic alphabet. But another point is that it would be very hard to distinguish the meaning of a sentence by just using Kana. For instance in an article from Kanjiclinic.com there's an example where a sports-trainer just wanted to encourage his students by wishing them good-look but the incoming text message said something like "dress up like a woman as fast as possible". This was the result of what happened when he typed an SMS-message without paying attention to what was converted from the textprocessor. Besides this is one of the more outstanding examples it shows the problem only using kana would make Japanese almost unreadable, you would have to insert blanks for being able to read them.
But the general problem I see here is also the problem why this thread started, there are almost no suitable materials for learning kanji. Most people learn Kanji by write and memorize but you can also learn them by etymology and similar mnemonics. Since I started to study the japanese language I mostly concerned myself with this problem. There is for sure relatively much material on learning a mere of 500 kanji but the rest is the bigger problem. From my own experience I can also state the claim of Heisig that you can learn with his method up to 50-80 Kanji a week which would result in a mere of 28 weeks for 2000 Kanji.
Especially the etymology shows that behind every kanji is a little story and it would be a massive destruction of culture to shove them away.


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## Paul6550

I found this thread to be very very interesting.
I'd like to ask Todessprache what (s)he makes of the assertion recently circulating in linguistic circles that English is taking more and more of an "ideographic" nature. To many ethnicities around the globe written English _cannot _be understood, and one could very well be looking at an ideogram.
As for your assertion that you can more or less guess at what you hear in Portuguese, well, it's a Latin language using the Latin alphabet, that helps a bit, doesn't it? Also there is the fact that it's syllable-timed, which helps things even further.
Anyways, I still remember the first time I saw the word 'neighbour'. I was fourteen years old, and couldn't, for the life of me, guess its meaning. I asked the teacher, and she told me to 'contextualize', which is grossly overrated in my opinion, but I did it anyway, with no results. The more I looked at the word, the less I could grasp it. Well, I kind of guessed that it had like, 4 or 5 syllables!
Claiming that certain social constructs are more or less efficient is like berating the sky for its colour, it gets us nowhere really fast. This discussion reminds me of someone arguing recently why Brazil is a Portuguese speaking country. According to that person, if Brazilians spoke English, or Dutch, or French, or any other of what he called "advanced" languages Brazil would be much better off!
I told him that perhaps Brazilians speak Portuguese because of the last 500 years of their history, but I think the concept was kind of hard for him to grasp.


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## Todessprache

mr_anderson said:


> One has to admit that you got a point in saying that it would be much easier to just learn a phonetic alphabet. But another point is that it would be very hard to distinguish the meaning of a sentence by just using Kana. For instance in an article from Kanjiclinic.com there's an example where a sports-trainer just wanted to encourage his students by wishing them good-look but the incoming text message said something like "dress up like a woman as fast as possible". This was the result of what happened when he typed an SMS-message without paying attention to what was converted from the textprocessor. Besides this is one of the more outstanding examples it shows the problem only using kana would make Japanese almost unreadable, you would have to insert blanks for being able to read them.
> But the general problem I see here is also the problem why this thread started, there are almost no suitable materials for learning kanji. Most people learn Kanji by write and memorize but you can also learn them by etymology and similar mnemonics. Since I started to study the japanese language I mostly concerned myself with this problem. There is for sure relatively much material on learning a mere of 500 kanji but the rest is the bigger problem. From my own experience I can also state the claim of Heisig that you can learn with his method up to 50-80 Kanji a week which would result in a mere of 28 weeks for 2000 Kanji.
> Especially the etymology shows that behind every kanji is a little story and it would be a massive destruction of culture to shove them away.


 
The Koreans got rid of them.


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## Todessprache

Paul6550 said:


> I found this thread to be very very interesting.
> I'd like to ask Todessprache what (s)he makes of the assertion recently circulating in linguistic circles that English is taking more and more of an "ideographic" nature. To many ethnicities around the globe written English _cannot _be understood, and one could very well be looking at an ideogram.
> As for your assertion that you can more or less guess at what you hear in Portuguese, well, it's a Latin language using the Latin alphabet, that helps a bit, doesn't it? Also there is the fact that it's syllable-timed, which helps things even further.
> Anyways, I still remember the first time I saw the word 'neighbour'. I was fourteen years old, and couldn't, for the life of me, guess its meaning. I asked the teacher, and she told me to 'contextualize', which is grossly overrated in my opinion, but I did it anyway, with no results. The more I looked at the word, the less I could grasp it. Well, I kind of guessed that it had like, 4 or 5 syllables!
> Claiming that certain social constructs are more or less efficient is like berating the sky for its colour, it gets us nowhere really fast. This discussion reminds me of someone arguing recently why Brazil is a Portuguese speaking country. According to that person, if Brazilians spoke English, or Dutch, or French, or any other of what he called "advanced" languages Brazil would be much better off!
> I told him that perhaps Brazilians speak Portuguese because of the last 500 years of their history, but I think the concept was kind of hard for him to grasp.


 
You are misinterpeting what I am saying. Nothing is going to change, but look at the Korean model. They have gotten rid of Kanji. 

Portguese IS advanced; you guys have synthetic pluperfects and personal infinitives. No other Romance language can claim that.

I hope you are not implying that I am stupid or something?


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## Paul6550

No, I'm not. Much to the contrary, you do come across as someone who's very intelligent. Actually, you remind me of someone I met while attending one of Mr Tomio Kikuchi's lectures. He introduced macrobiotics in Brazil. When it was time for the questions at the end, someone in the attendance asked him a very difficult question, to which he answered, 'You know what's your problem? You're too intelligent!'
But I _am _hinting at the virtual impossibility of simply scratching something that, for better or worse, took an entire nation hundreds, if not thousands, of years to build.


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## Todessprache

Paul6550 said:


> No, I'm not. Much to the contrary, you do come across as someone who's very intelligent. Actually, you remind me of someone I met while attending one of Mr Tomio Kikuchi's lectures. He introduced macrobiotics in Brazil. When it was time for the questions at the end, someone in the attendance asked him a very difficult question, to which he answered, 'You know what's your problem? You're too intelligent!'
> But I _am _hinting at the virtual impossibility of simply scratching something that, for better or worse, took an entire nation hundreds, if not thousands, of years to build.


 
I know it won't happen. Just a pipe dream. I should try my hand at Portuguese.


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## Wishfull

Hello, Todessprache.

On second thought, I think you might be right.
Now even the prime minister of Japan can not read such easy kanji-s.
About myself, after using word processors, I've lost my memory how to write many kanji-s.

I think it might be the same thing to English people. A word processor kills precise memory of spelling. It teaches you the error and corrects miss-spelling automatically.

So in the future or even now, we don't have to learn kanji in a sense. We use only roomaji, which automatically changed to porper kanji.
Computers take place of our brains.


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## Todessprache

Wishfull said:


> Hello, Todessprache.
> 
> On second thought, I think you might be right.
> Now even the prime minister of Japan can not read such easy kanji-s.
> About myself, after using word processors, I've lost my memory how to write many kanji-s.
> 
> I think it might be the same thing to English people. A word processor kills precise memory of spelling. It teaches you the error and corrects miss-spelling automatically.
> 
> So in the future or even now, we don't have to learn kanji in a sense. We use only roomaji, which automatically changed to porper kanji.
> Computers take place of our brains.


 
So are you saying that you are forgetting how to write Kanji? Is this a general trend?


----------



## Starfrown

Todessprache said:


> So are you saying that you are forgetting how to write Kanji? Is this a general trend?


 
Hi again, Tod.

My Japanese professor in college mentioned to me once that his ability to write Kanji correctly had suffered as a result of using word processors, which automatically convert the Kana into Kanji. 

I remember seeing a term for such people once (it is rather rude, so be careful how you use it): 

ワープロ馬鹿 (waapuro baka)


----------



## Cynster

It's a lot harder to read when it's only kana >_< Kanji are hard to learn, but once I learn one, it takes a lot less time to understand the sentence.


----------



## wathavy

Hi.
I found this whole forum just these couple of days.
Hello to all.

As far as I have read this thread, there were not too much discussion how much languages are in fact similar, yet. I hope I am right.

I look at English sentences and I noticed that I sometimes don't recognize the spelling mistakes. I look at whole sentence rather than spellings.
I use the same perspectives for Japanese. I probably don't notice even if some of the Kanji parts are mis-formed, if they were close enough.

What I think, is that English  has Kanji to me. There are symbolic word which just let me have easy time. And the shape as well as its origin can tell me how that word has been composed of.
Say, inflame is made of in-flame.
Con- comes first half of any of words, like con-gress, conquir, congestion, con-graturate.
They all come from Latin, right?

I personally, don't disagree with the original poster that one day, if it is possible, we should get rid out of these complicated letters. But making drastic change will cost us a lot more than teachiing new commers, I might say. And quite sometime, people need to use both older Kanji and new simpler kanji for quite some time. Thus no one could come up with good solution than keeping conventional system, I guess.

Anyway, I guess, European languages do have 'sort of' Kanji, to me.

What do you think?


----------



## Wishfull

wathavy said:


> Hi.
> I found this whole forum just these couple of days.
> Hello to all.
> 
> As far as I have read this thread, there were not too much discussion how much languages are in fact similar, yet. I hope I am right.
> 
> I look at English sentences and I noticed that I sometimes don't recognize the spelling mistakes. I look at whole sentence rather than spellings.
> I use the same perspectives for Japanese. I probably don't notice even if some of the Kanji parts are mis-formed, if they were close enough.
> 
> What I think, is that English has Kanji to me. There are symbolic word which just let me have easy time. And the shape as well as its origin can tell me how that word has been composed of.
> Say, inflame is made of in-flame.
> Con- comes first half of any of words, like con-gress, conquir, congestion, con-graturate.
> They all come from Latin, right?
> 
> I personally, don't disagree with the original poster that one day, if it is possible, we should get rid out of these complicated letters. But making drastic change will cost us a lot more than teachiing new commers, I might say. And quite sometime, people need to use both older Kanji and new simpler kanji for quite some time. Thus no one could come up with good solution than keeping conventional system, I guess.
> 
> Anyway, I guess, European languages do have 'sort of' Kanji, to me.
> 
> What do you think?


I perfectly agree with *wathavy*.

Kanji may look difficult, but once mastered, it is very easy to understand, or to memorize, and in most case to pronounce.

My experience;
When I was in high school I had to memorize the word "extraordinary". It was very difficult for me to memorize long spelling because I didn't have any background of the word. Just have to memorize 13 letters.

But now it is easy for me because I now know it is "extra"+"ordinary", which are not difficult, rather _ordinary_ words.
"Extra" and "ordinary" are what *wathavy* calls *English Kanji*.

I like *wathavy*'s opinoin very much.


----------



## wathavy

Oops, I am flattered. Thanks for your comments.


----------



## hmoulding

I am a nissensei of Japanese. I gather that if I write using hiragana, Japanese speakers will usually understand what I mean.

Kanji are quite a challenge for me, but I've recognized a couple of things about them.

First is that without them, I find that Japanese is even more difficult to read. I've puzzled for long whiles over hiragana passages that were written for gradeschool children. If they had used kanji I might have understood them more quickly (always supposing they were kanji I already knew). 

Then there are practical difficulties with using just kana.

Japanese has about 1/3 the number of sounds that English has. 

In English we have many words that sound the same: to/too/two, for example. We use spelling differences to make the meaning more clear in writing. 

Japanese has many more words that sound the same. Even though Japanese syllabaries seem to contain more characters than the Roman alphabet, they in fact allow for much less variation in orthography, so as a result it is not possible to use orthography to differentiate between words that sound the same. 

Only kanji makes it possible.

That having been said, there are some English orthographic conventions that would easily transliterate into Japanese and make the use of kana less problematic. Spaces between words (which actually would mean someone would have to decide how to break up certain grammatical forms into words - not a trivial task), more varied punctuation, and perhaps the use of accent marks to indicate tone, all would help. (Though they might be a problem where differences in Japanese dialects are concerned.)

But ultimately, it's impractical for the Japanese to do without kanji. There is far too much material written using kanji to make it possible for Japanese public education to ever forego teaching kanji without creating a generation of illiterates.

For English speakers it might be instructive to find examples of various projects to make English orthography more logical. They are often very difficult to read, especially so for people whose English dialect isn't similar to the dialect spoken by the people who wrote that stuff. To that extent what a couple of people here have said is true: English words and how they are spelled are kind of like kanji. They are at least independent of dialect, and understandable by all English speakers. (Kanji have the additional advantage in that often their idiograms are recognizable and give hints as to the word's meaning. That's something the Roman alphabet cannot do.)


----------



## hmoulding

<<<I am a nissensei of Japanese. I gather that if I write using hiragana, Japanese speakers will usually understand what I mean.>>>

I bet nissensei was wrong... second year Japanese student...


----------



## hmoulding

A side comment: I recently came across the slang word kunoichi, to mean female. It's supposedly derived from taking apart the kanji 女　to make くノ一. Very silly, but fun, too. It kind of shows how Kanji are viewed by Japanese speakers. And it might give some of us another way of remembering some kanji. ^_^


----------



## wathavy

Hi, molding.
Yes, you are ninensei.
Also, I replied this so I can clear about KuNoIchi which supposed to mean female ninjya.


----------



## Bakamono

Todessprache said:


> xxx
> 
> For thousands of years Korean used Kanji as well with the same arguments. You can learn the Korean alphabet in a matter of hours and you can read it very quickly. *I agree that it is a matter of pride, not logic or reason that the Japanese retain Kanji.* _Genji Monogatari _was written in Hirigana. My only point is that ideograms are not necessary.



Well, actually, if we are going to take "pride" into account, Koreans got rid of Hanja also as a matter of "pride".



> In the nineteenth century, the revived and improved       script, with the fine title of Hangul, 'the Great Letters', was       a nationalist symbol in the face of Chinese literary domination       and Japanese conquest. Western traders and missionaries used it       for easier communication and the missionary goal of popular       education, and it helped Christianity to gain ground in Korea       as in no other non-colonial Asian country.
> 
> With the expulsion of the Japanese in 1945, hangul gained       official status, supported with popular enthusiasm. It had the       irresistible combination of being both patriotic and easy, so       that it was preferred over the internationally advantageous       option of the roman alphabet. Living in Korea, I was able to       observe the transition, and to discover myself how easy hangul       was to learn and use.
> 
> 
> http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/wkorref.htm


I have no doubt that:

1) Koreans have full right to do whatever they want with their language, in order to improve every aspect of it. 
2) Hangul without Hanja seem to works perfect for Koreans.

But I venture to agree with many other people who write down his opinion here. Kanji, though difficult to learn (more considering the multiple pronunciations in the case of Japanese), have their advantages (as was said before).


Just a silly example (something that happened to me a few days ago...) that not only involves japanese but also chinese language:

I knew this kanji 同 (*dō* "the same"; from the word 同じ "onaji" = equal, same, 同級生 "dōkyūsei" = classmate), and I knew the kanji 意 (*i* "feelings, thoughts"; from the word 意味 "imi" = meaning, significance,　意見 "iken" = opinion, view).

So I came across this little chinese sentence: 我同意。It was not very difficult to figure out its meaning: _I + same + thoughts/feelings.
_
Later, with a online chinese dictionary: 同意  [tóngyì]*  1.*agree

...

Yes, I had to admit that it won't work in most cases, and I would be quite naive if I ever admit I can understand chinese with japanese kanji knowledge (always from the point of view of a non-native).

But I will feel more comfortable during a fire in China looking for the 出口 than in Korea looking for the 출구.

(At least if there's no signs like this: http://h50177.www5.hp.com/images/Yong-san_as2.jpg)


----------



## palomnik

After reading over all the comments on this thread, I can't escape the feeling that Todessprache is trying to get in the face of all us language aficionados on this site, by maintaining the thesis that the use of a syllabary, if not an alphabet, would be a more "efficient" way of writing some languages, Chinese and Japanese in particular.

It's debatable what "efficiency" means in this sense.  In both Chinese and Japanese the basic unit of pronunciation is the syllable, not the individual phoneme.  Also, both languages have a severely limited number of syllables that can actually be pronounced in the language (augmented by the use of tones in Chinese).  In addition, both languages have a large number of homonyms, particularly in the written language.  In Chinese, where the syllable is also the basic morphological unit, it is not surprising at all that they made use of a form of writing where each syllable has a unique symbol, with multiple symbols for homophonic syllables with different meanings.  In Japanese, many of the most problematic homonyms are precisely those words borrowed from Chinese, so adopting the kanji for them makes good sense.

All of this aside, one basic rule of writing systems the world over is that they are not created with the idea of making it easier for foreigners to learn how to read them; English is living proof of that.  They represent a cultural legacy that it is not easy to just throw away.  One reason that the Korean _hangul_ system of writing caught on and displaced Chinese characters was that to write in characters effectively meant writing in Classical Chinese, which created a severe limitation on the devlopment of literacy in Korea up to the beginning of the twentieth century.  Given that scenario it is not surprising that Chinese characters were phased out.  Japan, however, got past the phase of writing in classical Chinese a millenium ago.


----------



## wathavy

I guess, Palomnic has summarized well about the Kanji.

Thanks to these complication exist in Japanese and Chinese and Koreans, we strive though. 

BTW,
My kid does not know how to read Kanji at the age of 15, quite often than not.
He just knows what it means and he pronounces them in a wrong manner.
And he finished reading any Harry potter translated version in two nights!

And he has almost no difficulty writing standard Japanese as far as he can use keyboard with automatic conversion on my and his PC.

And he does not care about his deficiency on Kanji knowledge nor calculation ability, because of the mobile phone.

I guess the newer the generation, fewer the emotional attachment to Kanji.
Kanji may disappear from our society not too long from today, I might say.

Who knows.


----------



## Todessprache

> After reading over all the comments on this thread, I can't escape the feeling that Todessprache is trying to get in the face of all us language aficionados on this site, by maintaining the thesis that the use of a syllabary, if not an alphabet, would be a more "efficient" way of writing some languages, Chinese and Japanese in particular.


 
I am not trying to get into 'anyone's face'. However, you could argue that Semitic languages should reprise cuneiform; the oldest documentation in the world was written using cuneiform; why not continue its usage?



> It's debatable what "efficiency" means in this sense. In both Chinese and Japanese the basic unit of pronunciation is the syllable, not the individual phoneme. Also, both languages have a severely limited number of syllables that can actually be pronounced in the language (augmented by the use of tones in Chinese). In addition, both languages have a large number of homonyms, particularly in the written language. In Chinese, where the syllable is also the basic morphological unit, it is not surprising at all that they made use of a form of writing where each syllable has a unique symbol, with multiple symbols for homophonic syllables with different meanings. In Japanese, many of the most problematic homonyms are precisely those words borrowed from Chinese, so adopting the kanji for them makes good sense.


 
Homophony can be done away with by the correct usage of diacritic marking. To argue that logograms are essential because of this is fallacious.



> All of this aside, one basic rule of writing systems the world over is that they are not created with the idea of making it easier for foreigners to learn how to read them; English is living proof of that. They represent a cultural legacy that it is not easy to just throw away. One reason that the Korean _hangul_ system of writing caught on and displaced Chinese characters was that to write in characters effectively meant writing in Classical Chinese, which created a severe limitation on the devlopment of literacy in Korea up to the beginning of the twentieth century. Given that scenario it is not surprising that Chinese characters were phased out. Japan, however, got past the phase of writing in classical Chinese a millenium ago.


 
I would argue that it is not only difficult for foreigners but for Chinese and Japanese as well; if it were not the reforms undertaken by both countries in the 20th century to simply the system would not have taken place. Just off the top of my head, if you were to ask a native speaker of Chinese or Japanese to produce the Kanji for say; sneeze, quadriceps, hypothermia, frostbite, menopause, etc., would that person be able to remember it instantly? In my experience they cannot recall most if not all of them. Surely Kanji have semantic value but think about the other advantage of an alphabet; upon hearing a new word you can write it down; if you learn the word for spear in Chinese, you have no idea how one would write it.

Once again I am not arguing that things will change, or even should but in the case of Chinese for example, if they wish to achieve superpower status, then further reforms would have to likely take place; the tones are difficult enough but having to spend years upon years of daily practise to memorise characters is probably not going to be attempted by most.


----------



## Todessprache

wathavy said:


> I guess, Palomnic has summarized well about the Kanji.
> 
> Thanks to these complication exist in Japanese and Chinese and Koreans, we strive though.
> 
> BTW,
> My kid does not know how to read Kanji at the age of 15, quite often than not.
> He just knows what it means and he pronounces them in a wrong manner.
> And he finished reading any Harry potter translated version in two nights!
> 
> And he has almost no difficulty writing standard Japanese as far as he can use keyboard with automatic conversion on my and his PC.
> 
> And he does not care about his deficiency on Kanji knowledge nor calculation ability, because of the mobile phone.
> 
> *I guess the newer the generation, fewer the emotional attachment to Kanji.*
> *Kanji may disappear from our society not too long from today, I might say.*
> 
> *Who knows*.


 
Do you really believe this might happen?


----------



## wathavy

Who knows?


----------



## Todessprache

wathavy said:


> Who knows?


 
There is also a line of argumentation that Kanji usage, at least in terms of he keyboard will INCREASE because it saves space...


----------



## wathavy

Just a small notes.

There was a prime minister who mentioned that it is worthless to learn Japanese kanji for these long time.

Haven't you seen 'Hero Nakamura'? Whose parents moved to U.S. so their children can adapt themselves into English society?

And look at me, I spend good half a decade to adapt myself to this stubborn society after I spend some time in western world.

I use most of my software in English, and I need to post support request to English forum for my product support.
No one cares what is my background.

To me, Japanese start to realize they are left behind while they're looking into their own main land.

One day, they start hiring any English user from any country and may say,
they quit using Japanese, let's use English.

I cannot tell, how things change.

P.S.
At least at home, my kids are laughing at looking 'Hanna Montana'. 
And they feel weird when they see Dean and Sam speak Japanese on TV.


----------



## Todessprache

wathavy said:


> Just a small notes.
> 
> There was a prime minister who mentioned that it is worthless to learn Japanese kanji for these long time.
> 
> Haven't you seen 'Hero Nakamura'? Whose parents moved to U.S. so their children can adapt themselves into English society?
> 
> And look at me, I spend good half a decade to adapt myself to this stubborn society after I spend some time in western world.
> 
> I use most of my software in English, and I need to post support request to English forum for my product support.
> No one cares what is my background.
> 
> To me, Japanese start to realize they are left behind while they're looking into their own main land.
> 
> One day, they start hiring any English user from any country and may say,
> they quit using Japanese, let's use English.
> 
> I cannot tell, how things change.
> 
> P.S.
> At least at home, my kids are laughing at looking 'Hanna Montana'.
> And they feel weird when they see Dean and Sam speak Japanese on TV.


 
Kanji are beautiful though...


----------



## wathavy

I brush kanji on papers.
Yes, it looks nice.

And my father did million times better than I can.

They possibly hang them in their museum, saying,
'Japanese ancient letters.'

I don't know, really.


----------



## Todessprache

wathavy said:


> I brush kanji on papers.
> Yes, it looks nice.
> 
> And my father did million times better than I can.
> 
> They possibly hang them in their museum, saying,
> 'Japanese ancient letters.'
> 
> I don't know, really.


 
And I bet your grandfather could do it even better than your father...


----------



## Flaminius

Todessprache said:


> I am not trying to get into 'anyone's face'. However, you could argue that Semitic languages should reprise cuneiform; the oldest documentation in the world was written using cuneiform; why not continue its usage?


Cuneiform was a combination of an Akkadian syllabary and Sumerian logogram/ideogram.  Cumbersome as it sounds, the system continued to be the lingua franca of cultures and empires of Mesopotamia for two thousand years, until it was replaced by Aramaic.  Sumerian influence can be seen throughout the history of cuneiform.  Many Semitic languages had more syllables than can be sufficiently represented by cuneiform which had around 900 syllabaries.  It was developed for Akkadian with surprisingly simple phonemic patterns.  In fact, early alphabets were used side by side with cuneiform.



> Homophony can be done away with by the correct usage of diacritic marking. To argue that logograms are essential because of this is fallacious.


Using diacritical marks sounds like smuggling complexity into an alphabet system.  Anyway, it won't work for Japanese where "abortion" and "denial" have exactly the same pronunciation (This one is very easy.  The champion of homophony consists of at least 20 words with different meanings).



> Just off the top of my head, if you were to ask a native speaker of Chinese or Japanese to produce the Kanji for say; sneeze, quadriceps, hypothermia, frostbite, menopause, etc., would that person be able to remember it instantly? In my experience they cannot recall most if not all of them. Surely Kanji have semantic value but think about the other advantage of an alphabet; upon hearing a new word you can write it down; if you learn the word for spear in Chinese, you have no idea how one would write it.


I confess to my inability to write "sneeze" in kanji but I can understand it when I see it.  One advantage of logograms is that knowing the pronunciation is optional for understanding the meaning.  E.g., to understand what _periarthritis humeroscapularis_ is one has to know that the words are broken down to _peri-_, _arthritis_, _humero-_, _scapularis_ as well as the meaning of each morpheme.  They are from languages that an average English speaker is not too familiar with.  The Japanese counterpart, 肩関節周囲炎 (literally, inflammation around shoulder joint), consisting of kanji from primary education, is much easier to understand.

Alphabets, logograms, combinations of syllabaries and logograms—they necessitate different strategies for the brain to process them.  The results, however, are largely uniform; fluent reading and efficient comprehension.


----------



## palomnik

Attempting (more or less successfully, I hope) to not let my polite outrage as a _gaijin _who has invested the time to learn to read Chinese and Japanese become an issue in this discussion, let me see what I can say to this.



Todessprache said:


> Homophony can be done away with by the correct usage of diacritic marking. To argue that logograms are essential because of this is fallacious.


 
Not if you have twenty different morphemes, all pronounced alike, including the tone.  Have you ever tried to learn to read Thai? It makes allowance for the tones of each syllable, and it is "phonetic"...and it is damned difficult to learn to read correctly.

I expect that learning to read kanji seems like a frightful difficulty to some potential students. In fact, it is not nearly as difficult as most people think it is. After a few months of study you will only need to see a character once and you'll remember it. As Flaminius says, it involves using different parts of your brain. The real difficulty of Chinese for foreigners is that there are no word roots in common with Western languages; Chinese (Mandarin Chinese, anyway) does not - cannot - borrow words from other languages, so you have to learn how to say everything from ground zero.  Even Japanese, with its large number of borrowings, doesn't have this problem.



Todessprache said:


> I would argue that it is not only difficult for foreigners but for Chinese and Japanese as well; if it were not the reforms undertaken by both countries in the 20th century to simply the system would not have taken place. Just off the top of my head, if you were to ask a native speaker of Chinese or Japanese to produce the Kanji for say; sneeze, quadriceps, hypothermia, frostbite, menopause, etc., would that person be able to remember it instantly? In my experience they cannot recall most if not all of them. Surely Kanji have semantic value but think about the other advantage of an alphabet; upon hearing a new word you can write it down; if you learn the word for spear in Chinese, you have no idea how one would write it.


 
For one thing, the Japanese changes were done as much if not more for printers, who did not have to stock five thousand kanji any more in order to print a newspaper.

For another thing, would an English speaker know how to write sneeze, quadriceps, hypothermia, frostbite, menopause if he had never seen the words in print before? If a Japanese can't remember how to write "sneeze", it's because it is almost never necessary to write the word at all! But he will recognize it if he sees it. And he will very likely understand what words like quadriceps, hypothermia, frostbite and menopause mean the first time he sees them in print, since the individual kanji will combine to give the meaning in most cases.



Todessprache said:


> Once again I am not arguing that things will change, or even should but in the case of Chinese for example, if they wish to achieve superpower status, then further reforms would have to likely take place; the tones are difficult enough but having to spend years upon years of daily practise to memorise characters is probably not going to be attempted by most.


 
Perhaps. But it sounds like the argument that Russians could not achieve superpower status because the synthetic nature of their language made it difficult to adopt foreign words. As long as the Chinese can understand what they're writing I don't think that they will be behind the curve; rather it may be the rest of the world that will be if they don't learn to read Chinese.


----------



## wathavy

Todessprache said:


> And I bet your grandfather could do it even better than your father...



Yeap, you bet.

But my mother's father used to be the  bow shooter well known. And the first kinder garden founder and it's principal in my hometown, I have ever heard.
(He was a farmer basically, but he did like to devote himself for this kind of volunteer work.)

We can still see his shooting posturing picture in one of the oldest temple which said to have been there for about 900 over years after 'Heike' lost against 'Genji'.(Wow, they are losers!)


P.S.
Sorry, I didn't inherit any of those stuffs.


----------



## hmoulding

I'm not sure, but for outsiders to say how someone should improve their language is a bit inappropriate. Outsiders don't have to live with the results.

I don't know if Todessprache is German (the handle sounds German), but recently Germany went through a major modernization of their spelling rules. Many of the new rules were meant to regularize German spelling and make it easier to use non-German keyboards to write German. (The computer strikes again!) Even though these changes were minor, compared to doing away with kanji, there were many Germans who to this day resist the changes and get angry every time they are confronted by them. My mother taught school, and she is quite bad in that respect. 

If Japanese people decide to do away with kanji, they will have to do it on their own terms, and for their own reasons. I doubt kanji will ever go away entirely, if for no other reason than that they look nice. But with the addition of word spaces, more punctuation, and diacriticals (have a look at Vietnamese to see how one might modify the Roman alphabet to deal with an entirely different set of problems than just a few words that sound alike), Japanese may well get to the point that except for the signs 女　and　男 kanji will go away entirely.

But how long that takes is entirely up to them.


----------



## ty604

For me kanji is a godsend. I cringe at the thought of trying to learn 20,000 words with no ideograms to speed up my memorization process. 

And as mentioned above you only need to learn a base of about 2,000 kanji. I recommend twice or three times that.

Most people hate studying kanji. I love it.


----------



## hmoulding

ty604 said:


> For me kanji is a godsend. I cringe at the thought of trying to learn 20,000 words with no ideograms to speed up my memorization process.



Hm, but that only works with written material. If you plan on understanding spoken Japanese or even speaking in Japanese then kanji don't really help, do they?


----------



## Outsider

I've been following this thread with delight. There have been some very interesting posts.

Not knowing Japanese, I can't really contribute much, except point out that one thing I remember reading several times here in the WR forums is that learning a different writing system is far from the hardest part about learning another language. Granted that this remark is usually made about other alphabets, rather than syllabaries or logograms... Still, while Japanese with its multiple scripts no doubt seems overwhelming when one is starting to learn it, that may be just a first impression that fades away with time.

And as for the fact that Japanese uses more than one script, that does seem complex, but I find some similarity in how in the Latin alphabet letters have different uppercase, lowercase, and cursive forms -- not to mention quirky and old-fashioned variants used in advertising or for stylistic effect (and people frequently have somewhat different handwriting!) We're so used to identifying these variants with each other that we don't even tell them apart.


----------



## Demurral

hmoulding said:


> Hm, but that only works with written material. If you plan on understanding spoken Japanese or even speaking in Japanese then kanji don't really help, do they?



But the more your read and the more words you know, the more japanese "steps" into your brain. Thus, understanding spoken japanese, and even speaking it, becomes utterly easier. Don't you think??


----------



## hmoulding

Demurral said:


> But the more your read and the more words you know, the more japanese "steps" into your brain. Thus, understanding spoken japanese, and even speaking it, becomes utterly easier. Don't you think??



I know that at my stage of learning Japanese, reading and hearing are in many ways different, as are writing and speaking. I can read or write a Japanese sentence even if I don't remember the spoken word, as long as I remember the kanji. That's happened more than once.

When I was learning other languages, that never happened. I either knew a word or I didn't.


----------



## panjabigator

hmoulding said:


> I know that at my stage of learning Japanese, reading and hearing are in many ways different, as are writing and speaking. I can read or write a Japanese sentence even if I don't remember the spoken word, as long as I remember the kanji. That's happened more than once.
> 
> When I was learning other languages, that never happened. I either knew a word or I didn't.



I too have been following this thread with much interest.  

Does this mean that Mandarin speakers and Japanese speakers could communicate effectively through Kanji even though they don't know each others language?

Sorry if this question is off topic.


----------



## xqby

panjabigator said:


> Does this mean that Mandarin speakers and Japanese speakers could communicate effectively through Kanji even though they don't know each others language?


 
This has been brought up before, and the basic answer is: sort of!


----------



## Flaminius

—Moderator Note—

Dear posters;

I should like to remind you all that the topic of the thread is whether or not kanji is necessary for the Japanese language (whatever necessity would mean).  Other topics, however interesting and relevant language questions they may be, do not belong to this thread.  Refer to existing threads or create one anew.   Comments on mutual intelligibility between Chinese and Japanese are moved to the previous thread that *xqby* has graciously suggested _supra_.  Please continue discussion there.

If you post in this thread, your comments must address the thread topic *and* relevant to what have been said about it in previous posts.  Please be advised that irrelevant comments will be removed.

Happy discussion,
Flam moderator


----------



## lammn

Sorry I'm a little bit late to this discussion because I just manage to find some time to read this thread.

Pardon me, but I have to say that the thread topic itself is *biased*. 
What is meant by "truly necessary"? I find water is "truly necessary" for the human body because you will die without it. For kanji, however, it is certainly not "truly necessary". History has proved that the Japanese can live without kanji in the past, let alone Koreans. Japanese people won't die even if kanji was taken away from their language.

So, one should rather ask: Is it *advantageous* to use kanji in the Japanese language? Actually, I found most of the discussions of this thread has _already_ developed into a discussion on the _pros and cons_ in using kanji in the Japanese writing systems. I'm not going to repeat them. However, I would like to point out that whether it is advantageous (or truly necessary, if you insist on using that term) is a very _subjective_ matter, and it depends on _whom_ the question is addressed to.

It seems to me that most native Japanese-speakers of this thread *support* the use of kanji in the Japanese language. For non-native speakers, the opinions are varied. However, several posters of this thread agree that the more they learn Japanese, the more they like kanji.



Todessprache said:


> I would argue that it is not only difficult for foreigners but for Chinese and Japanese as well; if it were not the reforms undertaken by both countries in the 20th century to simply the system would not have taken place. Just off the top of my head, if you were to ask a native speaker of Chinese or Japanese to produce the Kanji for say; sneeze, quadriceps, hypothermia, frostbite, menopause, etc., would that person be able to remember it instantly? In my experience they cannot recall most if not all of them.


 
Todessprache, did you adopt a scientific methodology in your sampling? How did you choose the sample/person to be interviewed? Just go out to the street and ask whoever Chinese or Japanese come across you? Or merely asking the people you know? How large was your sample? Did you ask only ten, or hundreds of people, even though there are billions of Chinese people and hundred millions of Japanese in this world?

I'm not a Japanese, and so I don't know the relevant kanji for those words. But as long as the _Chinese characters_ are concerned, I find no difficulties in writing them:


sneeze 打噴嚏
quadriceps 四頭肌
hypothermia 低温症
frostbite 凍偒
menopause 停經/更年期


----------



## hmoulding

lammn said:


> ...one should rather ask: Is it *advantageous* to use kanji in the Japanese language?...



Maybe. It was likely a question prompted by a sense of frustration with kanji. Of course, if Japanese were easy to learn, it'd be English. ^_^

I think most of us (even those who grew up learning kanji) can appreciate the frustration, even as we understand that to learn Japanese as it is today (as opposed to how it might be some day), kanji is in fact *indispensible*, not just advantageous. 

Without knowing at least half of the jouyou kanji, it is difficult to read any except the most basic Japanese text. (Plan on spending a lot of time with your 字書.) It is certainly possible to write using just kana or even romaji and most Japanese will understand (as long as the context is there), but communicating in Japanese requires more than just being able to jot a quick note to the hotel staff about needing more towels.


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## Todessprache

lammn said:


> I'm not a Japanese, and so I don't know the relevant kanji for those words. But as long as the _Chinese characters_ are concerned, I find no difficulties in writing them:
> 
> 
> sneeze 打噴嚏
> quadriceps 四頭肌
> hypothermia 低温症
> frostbite 凍偒
> menopause 停經/更年期


 
Well, you did spend your entire childhood learning them; do you think an alphabet or Kanji would be easier for a middle aged learner?


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## hmoulding

Todessprache said:


> Well, you did spend your entire childhood learning them; do you think an alphabet or Kanji would be easier for a middle aged learner?



Isn't that a slightly different topic? There is a raging argument over pedagogy and writing systems. I'm over fifty, myself. I'm learning Japanese precisely because it is difficult. The human brain is a use it or lose it proposition, and I intend not to lose it. ^_^

How do you propose to deal with the fact that most Japanese writing uses kanji? Libraries filled with books and magazines. Dozens of newspaper morgues. Reams of official documents of one kind or another. Storefronts. Product labels. Millions of websites. That's not a trivial thing to ignore, is it?


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## Blootix

Todessprache said:


> Well, you did spend your entire childhood learning them; do you think an alphabet or Kanji would be easier for a middle aged learner?


No language is going to change for the sake of a middle aged learner.  At least in Japanese you can choose to write in kana if you so choose.  In fact, certain Japanese video games are completely in kana.  

Granted, it is frustrating that I can't read the Kanji out loud when I see it, but I do see the benefits of Kanji.  Remember that there aren't any spaces in the Japanese language.  If that were the case in English, sentences would look like this: Ilovemilkandcookies.  Would you want to read that sentence?  I wouldn't.  The Kanji serve as spaces in the Japanese language.


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## wathavy

Just a second, has anybody put up the topic on the Kanji Kente?
It's the exam which you can take to know what level of your kanji knowledge is at.
It's like a judo's Dan. 
After all, it is more like Igo game or Shougi game for Japanese to play with Kanji for the moment to me.

I don't really care too much about kanji any more. I usually pay more attention to the contents itself than how it is written.

BTW, when I see a gaijin( sorry don't take as offensive word ) who writes some kanji, say 10 to 20. I already put him into the rank of kanji shodan person. It's a big step. He must have devoted himself very hard already.
So, it is a great pleasure for me (us?) to see foreigner to handle Kanji.

So, you know the Kanji Kentei, do you?


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## palomnik

wathavy said:


> Just a second, has anybody put up the topic on the Kanji Kente?
> It's the exam which you can take to know what level of your kanji knowledge is at.


 
Wathavy:  Maybe you should start a thread on this and put up a website on it, if there is one.  I know that I would be interested in trying it out!


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## wathavy

Thank you for your quoting my words, palomnik.

I personally am reluctant to start that particular thread, since I regard that is book publisher's strategy to boost their sales on this specific field.
But if one is really interested in, yes I might.

But I am the one who is rather negative to persuade people to sustain this kanji system here, since I don't think it is good for eye sight nor good for student to spare huge amount of time memorizing them.

I personally, don't know very much about Kanji kentei, either...

The whole point of my picking up this Kanji Kente or Kanji knowledge competition fads was that is what kanji has in its character.

To me, Kanji is not quite good for Japanese.   I wish we had Korean's guts to adapt Hangle kind of letters solely into our language system so that new comers inclusive of our children to have less difficulty and have easier time to get used to with our linguistic society than now.

P.S.
I didn't mean to post Kanji-Kentei as good, but sort of villain. 



I prefer Igo or Shougi competition rather than Kanji, since it is good both for your brain training and killing time than storing more complicated nasty member of kanji characters.


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## lammn

Todessprache said:


> Well, you did spend your entire childhood learning them; do you think an alphabet or Kanji would be easier for a middle aged learner?


 
Oh, come on! Do English-speakers also spend their "entire childhood" in learning English?

Being not a native English-speaker, I also have difficulties in remebering the spelling of new English _words_. New English words are difficult to me, the same way as kanji is difficult to non-native speakers. But this fact alone is not suffice to ask for a change in an existing language system.


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## hmoulding

wathavy said:


> I don't really care too much about kanji any more. I usually pay more attention to the contents itself than how it is written.



Since these comments appear to be from a 日本人, do you mind if I pursue them a little further? 

I commented earlier that I believe that if Japanese is going to do without kanji, that decision will have to come from them, and it can't be based on whether or not a 外人二年生 has a hard time with them. 

Japanese has already gone a long way towards simplification by standardizing on short of 2000 kanji. The standardization is to such an extent that "not for general use" kanji and jinmeiyou kanji are used in newspaper puzzles. But your comments suggest to me that some Japanese are themselves looking to simplify more, perhaps even for nationalistic reasons. How is that going?

Here in the USA we have been pushing people to move to the metric system for about fifty years. Even so, people still insist on using "foot, pound, gallon" instead of "meter, gram, liter." I think it would be a lot easier for people to go metric than for Japanese to lose all kanji.


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## wathavy

hmoulding said:


> Since these comments appear to be from a 日本人, do you mind if I pursue them a little further?


Oops,  you got me right.



hmoulding said:


> But your comments suggest to me that some Japanese are themselves looking to simplify more, perhaps even for nationalistic reasons. How is that going?


I guess I am the most extreme claimer and I don't really know there is more. Lately, they start to revert backwards, so they can use older Kanji.
Sorry to hear that.
But by looking at my kids who never get even half of what they should have, I start to believe it is not efficient to have them.
The knowledge of kanji is basically used for measuring kid's performance index. It's more or less similar to English knowledge, I'm afraid.




hmoulding said:


> Here in the USA we have been pushing people to move to the metric system for about fifty years. Even so, people still insist on using "foot, pound, gallon" instead of "meter, gram, liter." I think it would be a lot easier for people to go metric than for Japanese to lose all kanji.


I thought you or they decided to stick onto Imperial Unit.

I used to work in the oil field and I had to use both for my work and after a while, I didn't have too much trouble on estimating using either system at any occasion. I felt I expanded my experience field.
Oops, I am contradicting to my Kanji opinion, what a shame.

But I don't think getting less complicated word material for writing is not a issue (I bet no debate on that the simpler the better issue!), the difficulty comes when we start to reduce the number of Kanji, we probably have to rewrite too much books.

But who knows, in this computer kind of world, it may have been done by one click via bots.


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## hmoulding

lammn said:


> Do English-speakers also spend their "entire childhood" in learning English?



I'm not a native speaker of English, but, yes, they do. Spelling and reading English doesn't come naturally, and many American adults that I know often apologize for reading poorly or spelling badly.

That having been said, and to not move off the subject, in Japan students spend a lot of time learning kanji, compared to English students learning the alphabet or spelling. After kindergarten, there are no more letters to learn. After ninth grade, there are very few spelling tests. (I don't recall any, but it was a long time ago.) That is very different from Japan where each year through highschool brings dozens of new characters to learn.

It is said that Japanese students are at least the equals of non-Japanese students in language studies in the first few years. It is later that Japanese students fall behind their non-Japanese cohorts. I don't know if kanji is being blamed for this, or if people are looking at different reasons. But I have to wonder when I see Japanese highschool students still having to practice kanji, the way an American student (for example) would have been practicing the letter A in kindergarten. And it's not as if the jouyou kanji are enough: a Japanese college graduate is expected to know about 3,000 kanji.


----------



## hmoulding

wathavy said:


> I thought you or they decided to stick onto Imperial Unit.



No, we're supposed to change to metric. I just read up on the details at

lamar dot colostate dot edu slash ~hillger slash dates dot htm

There's some interesting information there.

But that's not the topic of this discussion.

When Japan went through its standardization after the war, does anyone know if it was considered at the time to abandon kanji altogether?


----------



## palomnik

Perhaps Todessprache has a point after all.  On reading the New York Times today, I ran across an obituary for Professor De Francis, a famous American scholar of the Chinese language.  One section read:

_Among longtime scholars of the language, Mr. DeFrancis stood out as an iconoclast. Perhaps his most controversial argument was that the writing system needed to undergo a major reformation, with characters that had evolved over thousands of years to be replaced by a phonetic Latin script..._

_(An interviewer) quoted Mr. DeFrancis as saying he had been so embittered by the fact that __Mao Zedong__ and other Chinese Communist leaders did not follow through with a project to overhaul the writing system that he had not set foot in China for more than 45 years._

DeFrancis wrote the most commonly used textbooks for learning Chinese in the United States; I used them to learn Chinese in the 1970's.  If he felt that the Chinese writing system was dysfunctional, that says a lot.


----------



## palomnik

hmoulding said:


> When Japan went through its standardization after the war, does anyone know if it was considered at the time to abandon kanji altogether?


 
Not as far as I know.  But it's interesting that in the 1880's there was a serious movement in Japan _to replace Japanese with English as the national language.  _

It sounds too incredible to be true, but it really happened.  Of course, the idea fizzled out after a few years.

But I am digressing, at least a little, as the moderators will note.  I beg indulgence.


----------



## Ilceren

Well, I've read all the posts in this topic (quite interesting all of them), but right now I'll go strictly to the main topic.
I don't know Japanese, but I'm sure Kanji are not necesary.
It is that way only in means of writing; of course you have to know Kanji in order to read actual books, since they have a lot of Kanjis. But when you have to write something, you don't have to write Kanji for other people to understand you.

I think of it as in reading out loud. When you've got to read a Kanji, you don't read a Kanji but a Hiragana that have the same meaning as the Kanji. So that means that the Kanji is there for some other purpose.
Also, when reading or talking you don't care for separations, all the words come one after annother, just as a full Hiragana text would look.

That brings me to word separation; if you say Kanji are necesary because it's the way to separate words, then you would have the same trouble when reading as when talking. When you're talking is (more or less - probably less) like when you're reading a full Hiragana text; no word separation, no symbols to give you a hint about what goes on, nothing. But you somehow are able to, based on the context, grasp the meaning and distinguish which of the syllables (Hiragana) would join up and create a Kanji (so to say). 
I think it's just a matter of growing accustomed to something. If they took out the spaces in my natal language, I would likely be a little lost for a few weeks/months/maybe years, and then recover the same speed of reading I had before. However, verbal communication will continue to be the same; interesting, isn't it?



hmoulding said:


> In English we have many words that sound the same: to/too/two, for example. We use spelling differences to make the meaning more clear in writing.
> 
> Japanese has many more words that sound the same. Even though Japanese syllabaries seem to contain more characters than the Roman alphabet, they in fact allow for much less variation in orthography, so as a result it is not possible to use orthography to differentiate between words that sound the same.
> 
> Only kanji makes it possible.


 
Well, it's as I've said, in spoken language you're able to make out what is someone telling you even if it could have different meanings. There are some cases where it's difficult though.

There were some other things I wanted to quote, but I think this wil do, as they will possibly appear again.

Edited: Oh, forgot something I wanted to say. I've heard that there are some people that use furigana to force the readers to read that Kanji in a certain way (I don't remember if the meaning was supposed to change, though - I think it doesn't), so without Kanji that can't be done, or at least it can't be done without you having to explain.


----------



## SpiceMan

I said before that I don't think there's much point on discussing whether kanji are "necessary" or not. Just for the sake of it I'll give my view on kanji. (not on its necessity.)

First, I would like to notice that writing and reading kanji are largely unrelated, I can read maybe over 1500 kanji. I read documentation at work, read books, magazines, surf the web, etc. in Japanese. I doubt that I can write more than 20 kanji by hand.
If I have a keyboard or mobile I can write all the Japanese I can read since writing with a keyboard/mobile uses the same brain part that reading does: so I can write documentation at work, mails, personal mails, even poems.

What kids learn at japanese schools is writing by hand. That's the only cumbersome side of kanji.

The "advantage" of the alphabet is that you can read even if you don't know the word. Sure you can read it, sure you can write it down again.
And since we're used our language being that way, kanji feels cumbersome...
And kanji are cumbersome, at first, but they're actually a great help for increasing your vocabulary.

If I were studying English, when I learn "water", I would just gain that knowledge and maybe underwater and that kind of compound words... But when I read "hydraulics", I don't have the slightest idea about it's meaning.
If I were studying Japanese, when I learn "水", it would help me understand dozens of words like 水力学 (hydraulics), 水上 (aquatic), 香水 (perfume), 下水 (sewage), 水虫 (athlete's foot)... it's a wide range of seemingly unrelated words !

Just as a joke, a Japanese could ask this very topic's question the other way around:



			
				Random_Japanese_Guy_Learning_English said:
			
		

> Is the Alphabet truly necessary?
> Because even if you know what "under" and "ocean" means, when you read "submarine" you don't have the slightest clue of what the word is all about. Sure, you can read it. So what? You don't even know what you're saying, you don' know what it means!
> 
> And what if you read a heading that says "submarine problems!". How do you know what is it about? Are there problems undersea? Or are we being attacked by an enemy fleet and struggling with the submarines menace? How ambiguous! In kanji it would be either 潜水艦 or 海底, really easy to get it.
> And don't even get me started with spelling issues!
> 
> Western languages should drop the alphabet and use kanji! How come they can't even see that!



It all comes down to vocabulary. And the only way to get vocabulary is by reading. And when you don't know a word and don't ask around or look for it in a dictionary, your vocabulary won't improve. Be it alphabet that you can "read" without knowing what it means, be it kanji that though you may "understand", even though you don't know how to say it out loud.

______________________________________
Changing a bit the topic, random thoughts on comparing writing in just hiragana and conversational Japanese:

1) In a conversation, you have context.
2) Even with context, people need sometimes to say "X, and by X I mean the one written with kanji A and B", or "X... as in Y" (Y being a synonym of X, but as X has many homonyms...) People even mimic writing the kanji in the air while speaking to disambiguate the intended message.
3) If you were to go to a library, a section would have three signs reading:
じてん
じてん
じてん

(jiten, jiten, jiten)

You wouldn't know which of the following is which:
辞典 - Dictionary
字典 - Kanji dictionary
事典 - Encyclopedia (Yes, I know encyclopedia would actually be 百科事典. It's just an example.)

Every language has nasty aspects in its study. For example, in Spanish verbs have lots of tenses, and so many irregular verbs that you keep on studying them all your compulsory education.
That's just unthinkable in Japanese, it just wouldn't make sense to keep on teaching verb inflections. A 5 year-old kid wouldn't make the kind of inflection mistakes in Japanese that a Spanish speaker does in its late teens, even adulthood. 

So, should Spanish regularize its verbs? No, you may have a hard time learning Spanish verb tenses, but by the time you master them you have 16 different combinations of tense and mood + 8 different inflections according to the subject. You can give your speech nuances that are very hard to translate to languages with fewer tenses such as English or Japanese or, to include every meaning conveyed, you'd have to write very long sentences. 

For the Japanese speaker learning Spanish is cumbersome because of its verbs and grammar.
Likewise, from the Spanish language point of view, learning to write Japanese is cumbersome. On the other hand, with Japanese, I had to learn the whole list of *three* irregular verbs! Piece of cake!


----------



## Ilceren

SpiceMan said:


> If I were studying English, when I learn "water", I would just gain that knowledge and maybe underwater and that kind of compound words... But when I read "hydraulics", I don't have the slightest idea about it's meaning.
> If I were studying Japanese, when I learn "水", it would help me understand dozens of words like 水力学 (hydraulics), 水上 (aquatic), 香水 (perfume), 下水 (sewage), 水虫 (athlete's foot)... it's a wide range of seemingly unrelated words !


Well, the point here is how close (geographically) languages influence each other. English is an example of a language that has been influenced by other languages. I'll explain this following you example. English (from what I know) has three different bases meaning water; "water", "hydro" and "aqua". The latter two are an inheritance from two languages (greek and latin; don't remember which word comes from which) that were dominant long ago, and on which Romance languages are based, or have a big percentage of words steming from them.

I think that if you compare the amount of empires and countries with a different language that existed in East Asia and in Europe, the amount of this last one would be at least twice. The empires are the ones that leave the most traces in language. For instance, Greek and Roman empires are the ones that have more words in most European languages. (I'm setting aside Spanish empire, since it didn't have much influence in languages and Macedonian, French, English, etc. empires since they didn't posses most of Europe). The only asian empire I know it could have had influence in Japanese is Mongolian, but hum, I don't even know if I got the timeline right (it could be said I'm not the best at History). 
Is there annother kanji that means "water"? If there is, it could have come from annother language, or just be annother way to say it =P

And for the examples you gave above, there's one that (according to the origins of the word) doesn't fit. Perfume comes from latin "per" and "fumare" (you couls translate it as "to make smoke") because the way to make something smell good was to burn some specific solid substances.
On a side note, I don't manage to find out how athlete's foot can be related to water; could you translate literally the kanji?



SpiceMan said:


> Changing a bit the topic, random thoughts on comparing writing in just hiragana and conversational Japanese:
> 
> 1) In a conversation, you have context.
> 2) Even with context, people need sometimes to say "X, and by X I mean the one written with kanji A and B", or "X... as in Y" (Y being a synonym of X, but as X has many homonyms...) People even mimic writing the kanji in the air while speaking to disambiguate the intended message.


I see, I've seen that, but I didn't remember when I was writing the post.
On the other hand, what happens in the radio then? it might be a bit awkward to be explaining things, and they can't write kanji in the air (well, they can, but people won't see them =P).



SpiceMan said:


> Every language has nasty aspects in its study. For example, in Spanish verbs have lots of tenses, and so many irregular verbs that you keep on studying them all your compulsory education.
> That's just unthinkable in Japanese, it just wouldn't make sense to keep on teaching verb inflections. A 5 year-old kid wouldn't make the kind of inflection mistakes in Japanese that a Spanish speaker does in its late teens, even adulthood.
> 
> So, should Spanish regularize its verbs? No, you may have a hard time learning Spanish verb tenses, but by the time you master them you have 16 different combinations of tense and mood + 8 different inflections according to the subject. You can give your speech nuances that are very hard to translate to languages with fewer tenses such as English or Japanese or, to include every meaning conveyed, you'd have to write very long sentences.


Well, as you say, each language has its pros and cons. I've heard (a friend told me, not sure if what he said is right though) that Japanese doesn't have a future tense, and i find it hard to come up with a way to say something using the other tenses, but making it sound your going to do it in the future. I've found some, but it doesn't work in all the cases.

An as for the mistakes, it just depends on the language that was a base for yours and the evolution it has gone through. If the mother language had irregular forms, so that the branch language. And even if the mother language hasn't, one verb can evolve into two different verbs, one staying the same and the other adapting to the regular form of the branch language, so it's impossible to get rid of all irregular forms.

And lol for the last sentence of your post; only Japanese could have so few irregular verbs XD


----------



## 涼宮

ty604 said:


> For me kanji is a godsend. I cringe at the thought of trying to learn 20,000 words with no ideograms to speed up my memorization process.
> 
> And as mentioned above you only need to learn a base of about 2,000 kanji. I recommend twice or three times that.
> 
> Most people hate studying kanji. I love it.



I agree! Kanji are a godsend to me too! I love them! And I'm one of those students who find kanji easy to learn and memorize. I couldn't live without kanji in Japanese. I find more difficult to understand something solely written in kana than kanji, to do that, they would have to be written with blanks, something that from the point of view of ''beauty'' I find horrible, to me, Japanese is meant to be written with kanji, the same goes for Mandarin.



SpiceMan said:


> If I were studying English, when I learn "water", I would just gain that knowledge and maybe underwater and that kind of compound words... But when I read "hydraulics", I don't have the slightest idea about it's meaning.
> If I were studying Japanese, when I learn "水", it would help me understand dozens of words like 水力学 (hydraulics), 水上 (aquatic), 香水 (perfume), 下水 (sewage), 水虫 (athlete's foot)... it's a wide range of seemingly unrelated words !



That is one of the things I was going to say. Thanks to kanji, new words are far easier to learn than in other languages.
I find kanji necessary in Japanese because of its very simple phonetic system, if and only if Japanese had the amount of phonemes that Korean has, it'd be easier to understand JP in written w/o kanji, nevertheless, Japanese has few sounds, too many homophones, that is one of the reasons that kanji is for. Getting rid of kanji would need blanks between words to be inserted like Korean for being effective, something that could take years and years of analysis and rules by the academies of JP  and would likely not work. You just can't tell more than 120 million of people not to write kanji anymore . Kanji has advantages.


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## gonzalox237

But what about the Roomaji? 

Have you ever think about how useful is this kind of writing when we're learning japanese? 

Occidental people would normally use roomaji as the simpliest way to write japanese. At least to me it seems to be. Roomaji is much more easier. So when people say that they can make mistake with the readings using hiragana I dont think ( not sure) that could happen with roomaji( which I think is the easier way to write in Japanese )


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## 涼宮

I don't find roomaji useful at all, writing Japanese with only roomaji is like writing it with only kana. It's hard to understand and roomaji can be romanized in several ways: not very accurate. Most websites and teachers suggest that the first thing you do for learning Japanese is to learn the syllabaries, and I agree with that; furthermore, good dictionaries will be like they must be: kanji-kana. Take into account the large quantity of homophones in Japanese, kanji is needed to get rid of such ambiguities . That's my opinion.


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## terredepomme

Just to point out a wrong fact. The Korean language was never really written with Chinese characters. This is a common misconception that even Koreans often have. In pre-modern days, you either write Classic Chinese with Chinese characters or you write Korean(or vulgar speech) in Hangul. The mix of these two systems, although it existed, was quite rare, because it was seen as pointless. The mixed writing, as in Japanese, developped in the early 20th century and it gradually died out during the latter half. Japanese and Korean, although similar in many regards, are quite different when it comes to this matter. So the fact that Hanja is not seen very much around in Korean linguistic environment cannot really be used to argue  the usefulness or the lack thereof of kanji.


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## terredepomme

As for the question whether if Japanese should keep Kanji or not, I don't really feel like arguing over it, for I have done it many, many times. As for whether if it WILL happen, my guess is no, probably not. Linguistic or "economical" reasons aside, one of the main factors that the Chinese characters were used in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam for so long is the preeminent influence of the superpower that is China; Now, with this country rising again as the new superpower of the century, do you really expect them to abandon Kanji which used by the superpower next door? I think that is one "advantage" of Kanji that has not been discussed yet in this thread.


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## Schokolade

terredepomme said:


> Now, with this country rising again as the new superpower of the century, do you really expect them to abandon Kanji which used by the superpower next door?


あはは、それはまったくかんけいないですね、かりににほんのおとなりさんがあめりかであっても、そしてちゅうごくもしくはちゅうごくにかぎらずりんこくがたいこくであるないのいかんにかかわらずにほんはこのさきもかんじのしようをやめることはけっしてないでしょうね。もしまんがいちにもこのさきちゅうごくがかんじのしようをほうきしたりえいごしかつかわないくにになったとしてもにほんはかんじをすてたりしませんよ。だってみてごらんなさい。このぶんしょうはよみやすいですか？こどもによみきかせるえほんでもおとなにとってはよみづらいのに、このちょうしでにほんごのしんぶんやがくじゅつろんぶんがかかれていたりしたらどうでしょう、そうぞうしてもごらんなさい。ごぞんじでしょうけれどにほんごにはどうおんいぎごがたくさんあるでしょう。いんとねえしょんのみえないかきことばにおいてどうおんいぎごやよじじゅくごなどのむつかしいことばなんかをひらがなでならべられたらにほんごぼごわしゃでもいみがとらえきれないんですよ。


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## terredepomme

勿論日本の漢字使用が中国の漢字使用に従属的な訳ではありません。ですが、中国の存在も漢字の利点の一つだとは考えないでしょうか。外国では、日本の子供たちが完全な読解力を持つためには他の言語圏の子供より何年も長い時間が要る、と言いますが、その何年という時間と努力には、強大国である中国の文字を学ぶ時間も含まれている、と言い返せる、と思います。


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## Flaminius

にほんごは、ひらがなでかいてもまったくこまらないとおもいますよ。わかちがきのとういつてきなきそくがあればもっとよみやすくなるとおもいますが、いまあるくとうてんのきそくだけでも、なれればじゅうぶんよめます。なれればというところがようてんで、おおくのにほんじんはこんなかきかたになれようとはまったくおもわないでしょう。こゆうのもじぶんかのでんとうにほこりをもつことはさしてわるいことだとはおもえません。

和漢混交文には、失読症の発生率を低くするとか、中国語を学習する準備になるとかの利点があるといわれ、逆に完全な識字能力を育てるのに時間がかかるとかの欠点が挙げられます。私はこのような功利的観点から言語を論じることに反対です。言語はコミュニケーションの道具でしかないという考えが根底にあるものと思いますが、それはあまりにも多くの論証されていない前提に基づく仮定にすぎません。

独自の簡体字を採用した戦後の国語改革にさかのぼって無効を主張する人もいますが、今更旧字体の復活は無理でしょう。今の日本社会では文章を書く人の数も、流通している文章の量も七十年前とは比較できない膨大さなので、その安定性ゆえです。同じように「先進的」な言語規範を導入する試みも現在の規範の安定性に阻まれると思います。試みるだけムダで、社会的コストが膨大な割に効用は定かでなく、リスクが高いわけです。


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## kenjoluma

Things that need to be done in order to get rid of Kanji in Japanese.
[WARNING: My own personal daydreaming. Not to be taken seriously]

1) Apply the word spacing. It will reduce the confusion in reading the script without Kanji. 
2) Revive the archaic pronunciations and apply them to words. It will differentiate some of numerous homonyms.
3) Abolish as many Chinese-derived words as possible if there are replaceable Japanese words for them.
4) Invent new Japanese words for irreplacable Chinese words. eg) 地震 -> "Tsuchi-Burue" (hence differentiable from 自信 and 自身. Or maybe we can also invent new words for 自信 and 自身)

If any of Japanese politician follow this guideline as a national language policy step by step, which I believe will take about 50 to 100 years in total, THEN, Kanji will be unnecessary in Japanese language. HOORAY!


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## terredepomme

> 私はこのような功利的観点から言語を論じることに反対です。言語はコミュニケーションの道具でしかないという考えが根底にあるものと思いますが、それはあまりにも多くの論証されていない前提に基づく仮定にすぎません。


同感です。ちなみに、「言語はコミュニケーション」だと時々言われますが、私はそれは現代とのコミュニケーションではなく過去とのコミュニケーションでもあると思っているんですよね。つまり漢字を忘れた日本の人々は過去の日本の文化と断絶される。ですので韓国にも漢字の教育がもっと必要だと思っています。


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## Flaminius

kenjoluma said:


> 4) Invent new Japanese words for irreplacable Chinese words. eg) 地震 -> "Tsuchi-Burue" (hence differentiable from 自信 and 自身. Or maybe we can also invent new words for 自信 and 自身)


We do have an autochthonous word for 地震; which is _nawi_.  Apparently, we did not need to be taught about the phenomenon even when we were just half-naked barbarians running after herbivorous dinosaurs.   The agenda of "cleansing Japanese of Sinic words" should not only encompass reading Sino-Japanese words on their _kun_-reading but also pushing long forgotten words, grammatical phenomena and phonology back into the mouth and the brain of Japanese speakers.



> If any of Japanese politician follow this guideline as a national language policy step by step, which I believe will take about 50 to 100 years in total, THEN, Kanji will be unnecessary in Japanese language. HOORAY!


I believe somewhat similar thing was done in nationalistic movements in Europe when they were forging independent countries and independent languages at the same time (vis. e.g., Jonas Jablonskis for Lithuanian, father of the Standard Lithuanian, he purged Russian, Polish and other foreign words from the language).  It is fun to imagine what Japanese would look like today if Mēji intellectuals had known a lot more about older forms of the language.  It never occurred, however, to them that the autochthonous part of the language was productive enough to form a national language out of it.



terredepomme said:


> つまり漢字を忘れた日本の人々は過去の日本の文化と断絶される。


漢字だけで過去の言語文化との紐帯が保てるとは思えません。漢文訓読は中途半端な翻訳で分かった気にさせるだけで、古代中国語を理解する助けにはほとんどなりません。漢字の少ない「土佐日記」や「徒然草」でさえ敬遠されますし、とにかく古典文学は中高生に最も人気のない科目です。漢字が多ければどうかというと、明治文学の現代語版が好まれる有様です。これは逆に、十分コミュニケーションのとれない過去の文化遺産であっても、よいと認識されれば何らかの方法で障害が克服されることの例でもあります。



> ですので韓国にも漢字の教育がもっと必要だと思っています。


上の例で仄めかしたように現代日本語の過去との断絶（そういうものがあるとして）は、漢字を使わなくなったことよりは、言語そのものの激しい変化が原因なので、私なら朝鮮語においても同じような原因をまず疑ってみます。朝鮮語では「訓読み」に相当する現象が極めて少ないということからは、ハンジャがハングルに置き換わることの影響は、日本語から漢字がなくなることよりも限定的なのではないかということさえ推論できます。

Discussing language planning is fun but infeasible most of the time.  A language usually does whatever the hell it pleases.


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## kareno999

You can also use IPA to write every single language. Why bother maintaining all the confusing spellings in English, like "through/tough/though". Same argument here. Language is not about logic. It's about habit.



Todessprache said:


> For centuries literature was produced with the phonetic hirigana syllabary; I think it is clear that Kanji are not truly necessary for the writing of Japanese or for that matter of Chinese. Ideograms, whatever their advantages, are simply more cumbersome, unwieldy and laborious than an alphabetic writing system not to mention not necessary. There is the argument concerning homophones but many languages have homophones and get by just fine without ideograms.
> 
> What do you think?


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## terredepomme

> Language is not about logic. It's about habit.


Also about tradition.


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