Quote:
Originally Posted by KyleGoetz
I've struggled with knowing when to use kanji and when not to. In this case, it felt "right" to use kana and not kanji. Do you think it's because writing 是非 just feels so Chinese because it's a quite short word, both sounds come from Chinese (shi4fei1; not sure what the pronunciation used to be centuries ago when the sounds were taken from Chinese, but I'd guess "shihei" or something), and because we're using kanji for it. It just doesn't feel "right" with kanji.
But I can't explain why. :/
|
The only explanation I can think of is that this time, we are discussing ぜひ used as an adverb. 「是非来て下 さいね」 Even though you may not be able to explain this offhand, you have read enough Japanese in the past to feel "strange" seeing an adverb in all kanji. Though you may have, you didn't even have to recognize the word as being an adverb. All you had to do was to see where it was in the sentence to feel something was wrong.
___________
To the OP:
I didn't explain this in my last post, but it's correct by any standard to write 是非 as a noun. This time, though, the word is being used as an adverb, so I called it "being in bad taste". Sometimes, people tend to think that the more kanji they use, the more educated they appear. The truth is that this is not the case with certain words. Writing them in kanji will only make you look less educated.