Poll: referendum in Japan on ending kanji
 

my japanese partner really thinks kanji is inconvienant it's often double or triPle work on paper and computer.

Japan should have a referendum and get rid of kanji immediately, or not？

Opinions on this are welcome

I have stock in Twitter and the Japanese have a huge advantage when it comes to kanji and twitter with a 155 character limit. I don't want that to go away and have the Japanese people dump twitter for something else! So my answer is, no.

if that where true the rest of the world which do not speak Japanese would have dumped twitter already ,also twitter could just expand it's max wordcount easily if this happend

Tell your partner to learn more about Japanese language mechanics, as, quite obviously, his knowledge in this respect is limited.

Yup! The Japanese should definitely dump the characters they've been using for thousands of years due to your friends inconvenience.

Hahahaha.

No.

This has come up before.
I have also seen plenty of the "Japan should abandon hiragana, katakana, and kanji and switch to romaji!" opinions.

If you believe this, it is because you do not know enough of the language to see what a horrible and awful idea it is... And how much harder reading would actually become as a result.

Simple enogh, here is one sentence from asahi.com I took

住民からは「事故が収束せず、いつ帰宅できるかわから ない状況では、避難が長引くほど精神的な苦痛は強まる 」と批判の声があがっていた。

And when we eliminate the kanji
じゅうみんからは「じこがしゅうそくせず、いつきたで きるかわからないじょうきょうでは、ひなんがながびく ほどせいしんてきなくつうはつよまる」とひはんのこえ があがっていた。

AND for you illiterates who thinks that this world should only be represented in some form of English text:
juuminkarawa ( jikogashuusokusezu , itsukitadekirukawakaranaijoukyoudeha , hinanganagabikuhodoseishintekinakutsuuhatsuyomaru ) tohihannokoegaagatteita .

nuff said....

I hate to correct in a place like this, but 帰宅 is きたく. :)

Thanks for correcting... more reasons to have kanji...... :)

lol,,,
a good statement...
I just started to learn the language, so please, please tell your friend not to push out Japanese characters, because of his "inconvenience" that is...


:p Sorry, but I had to comment on this:D :D :D

Godwine nailed it. :vsign:

Unwillingness to learn something properly is no excuse to get rid of it, or to pretend it's not necessary.

This is rediculous. More lazy noobs trying to make excuses for not learning the characters. When I read the opening post, I imagined "Japanese partner" as a Japanese girlfriend or a native language exchange partner. It's clearly a couple of language students who've had 3 lessons and think they're the shit. Can see them showing off to randomers they know.

"Yeah man, I speak fluent Japanese. Kawaii desu neh"

Not sure about showing off, but I have a sense that its one of those anime/game lover who wants to learn but are too lazy to spend the effort in it, so their thought is the easy way out......

I'd like to see what they'd tell the Chinese about their writing system and what alternative they'd suggest....

Probably something like..

"China doesn't make Naruto so it doesn't matter what form of moon speak they use".

Ignorant fools they are...

Its kinda like Toronto in the early days when there are not as many Chinese immigrants, the non asian folks pretend to know Chinese by learning how a few words are pronounced, and discover that menus at a restaurant aren't written photonically...

Romaji is more kawaii desu.

Seriously speaking, if the japanese could find a way to write their language in an easier way, they should. I know this is a terrible idea culturally speaking, but in terms of pragmatism it isn't.

Look at korea and how they were able to do it, why is this impossible for japan? I mean I know there are many homophones and the like, but if a system was developed specifically to avoid issues, why shouldn't it be implemented?

Hate to help a nonsense thread grow but why would anyone even think about changing the writing system of the country with a virtually 100% literacy rate? What other countries can even claim it?

The current writing system works beautifully. If you cannot believe it, it just proves that you do not know enough Japanese yet and/or you have no respect for other cultures.

:p NO!!!

I want to make other peoples live miserable .. KANJI!! KANJI!! :p


.. stop being lazy and learn, or maybe u can invent your own language ..

For me personally I don't agree with it,,,did you try to ask a japanese how does he feel about it, because if anyone is to ask me to drop my language for his own convinence then I would simply tell him that "his convinece is his own problem" why should it involve my language....
Having a different language is something special, learn it to feel that speciality, don't be selfish...

Ok to make things clear my partner is a real japanese born in japan.

Thing is this, the kanji only seem to make things shorter, but its hardly the case. The kanji symbols themselves are so difficult to write, that they kill any time you save with it. So like the other person wrote a shorter japanese sentence with kanji, its actually a lot longer if you had to write it all down, in other words.

Kanji is not logical. Actually the whole japanese language isn't logical, i think its a very romantic and beautifull language, but logic not quite.

I am actually suprised and don't understand why so many people are in favor of kanji, its chinese anyway it doesn't belong to your language, its difficult and illogical.

I myself don't mind doing the effort of learning it, but my partner says its illogical, and based on how much effort it takes to write it down i tend to say i agree. So i wondered if more japanese people felt this way.

You already have one against: masaegu....

Again:

Pragmatism: Yes.
Cultural: No.

I won't try to change it anyway, I just like the challenge. Besides if they did change the writing system, it wouldn't be as awesome as it is now.

Can they change it? Yes. Should they do it? NO

How many years will that take? Its not a big bang, you can't expect to change the system and the next day, people are all converted and FULLY literate (Note I capped FULLY)

It has nothing to do with what it where its from, its part of the culture. The last I checked, MOST European language had some ingredient of English, and many shared the same alphabet but employed the use of accent. Maybe they should stop using the same set of alphabet then? Its English anyways?

i guess you want to get rid of french or romance-influenced words in english. too bad this is impossible.

My answer is NO.
It's just so much cooler to have Kanji, and as a Japanese who studies in China, I probably have the biggest advantage over other foreign students in learning Chinese:)
I've heard that Korean used to use Chinese characters like us but at some point decided not to. I wonder if for Korean to read their language is similar for Japanese to read an article all written in Hiragana...
Anyways, I can't imagine for Kanji to desappear from Japanese language!!

Opposed to them pretend Japanese people that we hear so much about?


You obviously do not know enough about the language to back up your argument. Kanji and Japanese as a whole is a very logical language.

英語より日本語の方が論理です。
More than English, Japanese is logical (Japanese is more logical than English).
Or as you would have a kanji-less translation

JAPANESEISMORELOGICALTHANENGLISH.

Take the word "live" for example. Did you read it as in "I live in England" or "I'm on live television?"

With kanji, this wouldn't be an issue.

But instead we have one kanji with 2 or more pronunciations :mtongue:

Shhhh! Who's side are you on? :p

Does the Roman alphabet come from your country? If not, why are you using it?

And you seem to have no idea that a large portion of the words used in English do not even come from English.

Annnd who cares if kanji are difficult for you or your GF? Fact is it works in Japan. It has worked here well over 1,000 years.

Finally, why the heck are you ignoring my remark that Japan has a virtually 100% literacy rate? If you cannot claim the same about your country, maybe it's your language that needs to be simplified, not Japanese.

はははは！！
冗談はやめてよ～釣りですか？

「去年から海外に住み始めました」「去年から貝が胃に 住み始めました」

「ここで履き物を脱いでください」「ここでは着物を脱 いでください」

漢字がないと困っちゃうね！
あのね、文字にすると、「イントネーション」が見えな いでしょう？だから、漢字がないと駄目なのよ。

Excellent examples!! I laughed out loud at the first pair.

I only wish OP could read them so he would know instantly how horrible and illogical his idea was.

日本語の読み書きができる人なら絶対ＯＰのようなデタ ラメな発言はしないんだよね。もし漢字を使用しない方 が良かったのなら、もう日本は１、０００年前に廃止し てるはずだ。結局は自分が単にまともに日本語を勉強し たくないってだけなんだよ。駄々っ子のスレだよ、これ 。「ダダスレ」だ。

I am more in favor of throwing away kanji because you can ' know ' the above examples from context, in order to distinguish them. Kanji is not necessary.

Its not, but i am not bothered by it. My gf is bothered by Kanji.

Well, if it bothers my GF, question comes on how many more people are bothered by it? Its not like i am AGAINST you or kanji in particular, but there's no reason to hold on to something that is illogical and difficult and which can be replaced by japanese. Fact is that Japanese developed hiragana, and it worked well without Kanji, its only been introduced to not fall behind chinese culture and economy at the time.

That Japan has a 0 or 100% literacy rate, has got not much to do with its illogical basis. And was therefore ignored by me, not for offensive reasons, but i simply could not relate any value on it topic whise. But you might see that differently.

Illogical?? How can you say it's illogical when you can't even read it. Difficult?? Isn't it the same thing as you have to learn by heart the spellings of complicated words in your language?

As a native Japanese speaker, I say it'd be sooo inconvenient to have to read and write Japanese without kanji. I can't imagine how irritating it'd be if I had to read a paper/novel or even manga without it. I used to read for my nephew some picture books which were written without any kanji or katakana, everything was in hiragana, and it was sooo hard for me to understand the meaning of each sentence at the very first sight, and therefore I had to read the stories veeery slowly, because you need to understand the meaning of each word before reading it aloud, which takes far more time without kanji. When you're not sure if a word means 'a bridge' or 'chopsticks,' you can't pronounce it correctly.

No.
1: referendums are stupid
2: kanji are cool
3: kanji are useful. Even in English we don't always stick purely to our alphabet, we have quite a few 'kanji' of our own- $,2,5,%,@,etc...

And I don't find kanji hard at all, that's the easy part of learning Japanese, learning vocabulary is the hard part.

Eliminating kanji would be much like eliminating punctuation and "proper" spelling in English.

I have yet to meet anyone Japanese over the age of, say, 10 - or rather the maturity of a ten year old - who has honestly expressed a belief that kanji should be eliminated. And even most lower grade schoolers only feel that way because their kanji homework is a pain.

Seriously, I think that either your "Japanese partner" is trying to humor you by telling you she thinks kanji are hard and a pain because you have trouble with them, is obsessed with English-language-culture to the point of bashing anything Japanese to win culture points... Or really has the mentality of a child.

Or maybe they are "Japanese" but grew up outside Japan where kanji have been a chore and of no use in real day to day life?

It is just so hard for me to understand why someone could think Japanese would be better off without kanji. It really just stuns me that anyone familiar with the language could feel that way.
Reading Japanese without kanji is even worse than English written phonetically and with no punctuation. There is so much that makes it incredibly slow and laborious to read and comprehend. I will second what Sumippi said about reading children's books. It is *hard* to read something aloud and fluidly to a child without going over it ahead of time when it is written all in hiragana. Even when it is something incredibly simple, it takes longer than reading kanji heavy newspaper.

I agree with everything you said, and I definitely don't believe in ridding Kanji in the Japanese language. The most important reason (in my opinion) is that it's a part of their culture. Kanji has been used in their written language for thousands of years. It's used on ancient pieces of art and documents. I also agree that it does help simplify their written language, and if it works for them, then hey, that's all that matters.

Regarding what you said about the American metric system: I think it does make sense. Which would be easier to envision? A child that is 3 feet tall, or a child that is 36 inches tall? Or I could say, "My house is 5,280 feet from the school." Wouldn't it be easier to say my house is a mile from school? We need inches to define things that are smaller than a foot (obviously).

Anyways- No, do not remove Kanji from the Japanese language. I enjoy learning it; I actually think its fun. If you have a problem with learning that part of the Japanese language, than maybe the language isn't the right one for you to learn.

Err, I think you misunderstood. No one was saying that the concept of inches or miles were illogical. Just that the system itself really seems so to those who use the metric system. The system used in the US is imperial, not metric, by the way.

10mm = 1cm, 100cm = 1m, 1000m = 1km, etc

If you were asked out of the blue how many feet there were in a mile, would you know? If you were asked how many... umm... pints in a gallon, would you be able to answer without intensive thought?

Hmm... I suppose you're right, but I actually do know those things. BUT, that's only because I was taught that in elementary when we were studying metric units. We had to learn that material to pass.

I do understand what you're getting at, and I have to say you're right, and the other asker. I misunderstood at first what he was saying.