Quote:
Originally Posted by hennaz
Hi all!
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Interesting subject. The Vietnamese haven't used it for a good while.
There would really be little gained from not using Kanji anymore. In fact it is integrated so much into written language, I imagine it would actually slow reading and understanding of print. Have a native try reading a Japanese Newspaper article in 100% kana. My guess is it would slow them down a little.
Not to mention how much print space would be lost going to all kana.... I guess they could shrink the kana print some because a lot of print details is not needed with kana versus Kanji where if you shrink it too much, it can not be recognized as easy.
Also Chinese cultural influence was strongly integrated with Japanese generations ago, and still is today; it is hard to pull that out now.
NHK and other do have a special daily news broadcast for the hearing and seeing impaired where they increase the print size on the captions and add furigana because of those that have decreased sight ability. (Great for foreigners too ^_^)
I do know some elderly that occasionally reference / study often used advanced kanji, as their memory fails them sometimes (thus the furigana). I getting a little off topic now.
Anyway, I don't think it will ever happen.