Should Japan abolish kanji?

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by Alexander84

I agree with robhol that this is a rather interesting subject. But I think it has gotten away from itself a little bit with immigration and political issues becoming a focus. Anyway, I just wanted to make a few observations on the linguistic side which people may find noteworthy.

The tendency for written language (and spoken) is historically towards simplification and communication efficiency. Current Kanji, in fact, already is "simplified Kanji" as are the two kana syllabaries, which were based on the same alphabet concept that moved hierogylphics through to a simplified alphabet. Hangul also was intentionally designed to increase literacy and linguistic fluency of the country, through the use of pronounceable units rather than understandable pictures.

The barriers to using kana exclusively have already been stated: hard to read, homophones, etc. But naturally there are ways that such problems could be tempered (punctuation.) More importantly, ways of handling such things would spontaneously develop, such as strengthening the tonal difference between homophones (like in Chinese) or a wider array of sounds in the Japanese language.

A previous post mentioned that Kanji study is good for your brain, to which I'll add that it probably benefits different regions of your brain than simplified alphabets because the picture-like characters probably stimulate visual sectors in addition to symbolic processing ones. Also, games featuring Kanji seem a bit more fun than English like counterparts. (Ex: draw all the Kanji you can using te-hen in a minute vs. write all the words you can using the latin prefix "contra-" in a minute.) However, such benefits have to be weighed against the negatives of Kanji use, since mentally stimulating things per se are not necessarily useful as societal customs (ex: Rubik's cube).

Obviously, the questions "should Japan do something...?" and "will Japan do something...?" and even "will this happen in Japan...?" are different. Japanese politicians and people probably have a much different idea of "What should Japan do" than I do, so clearly that depends on one's goals. I think most people here are in agreement that Japan will not do something drastic like banning Kanji, especially seeing as how they adore Kanji and seem to hold their language's purported difficulty to foreigners as a source of pride. However, increasing pressures to internationalize, and internal issues will probably force them to make further concessions to simplified writing in the near term.

I apologize for the length of this post.

Don't apologize. That's clearly the most comprehensive, scholarly, and fair post in this thread!

[WoHenNi]

漢字 is extremely useful, I find.

If it were exempt from the Japanese language, I believe adding spaces in sentences would be necessary, otherwise reading any document in ふりがな would be a nightmare.

While many claim that the language is harder to learn because of 漢字, I think they're not learning it with the correct perspective. Each 漢字 is like the equivalent of a word (sometimes two or more words), and if you look at it like that, it's just like opening the dictionary every day and picking out five words in English to learn -- then using them in a sentence.

If you do that with 漢字 (plus stroke excercises), it's a path to success. Great language and a great writing system, me thinks.

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by WoHenNi

漢字 is extremely useful, I find.

If it were exempt from the Japanese language, I believe adding spaces in sentences would be necessary, otherwise reading any document in ふりがな would be a nightmare.

While many claim that the language is harder to learn because of 漢字, I think they're not learning it with the correct perspective. Each 漢字 is like the equivalent of a word (sometimes two words), and if you look at it like that, it's just like opening the dictionary every day and picking out five words in English to learn -- then using them in a sentence.

If you do that with 漢字 (plus stroke excercises), it's a path to success. Great language and a great writing system, me thinks.

Well, if kanji were abandoned, I'd imagine Japanese would need a new writing system like Korean has with Hangul. Kana alone would be really confusing.

[WoHenNi]

Originally Posted by KyleGoetz

Well, if kanji were abandoned, I'd imagine Japanese would need a new writing system like Korean has with Hangul. Kana alone would be really confusing.

Slightly off-topic, I adore the Korean writing system. I've learnt bits and pieces of 한글 (Hangul), and I certainly wouldn't complain if Japan developed a similar writing system.

I find the Korean language to be very logical.

[Artvampire]

That's like asking if we should get rid of English. Much of English comes from old Latin. And Mexican-Spanish is pressured to be spoken in the western states.

I just think that the Japanese alphabet is way complicated, being a combination of 3 alphabets! Or at least, last I knew. But it is a part of Japanese culture, so-what if it doesn't make sense to everyone else, as long as it makes sense to Japanese.

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by Artvampire

That's like asking if we should get rid of English.

Absolutely false. The question is whether to change the writing system, not whether to kill the language itself.

And I sure wouldn't care if we switched writing systems provided the new one was better.

Of course, my comment presupposes that there is a better writing system than Japanese-with-kanji. As it now stands, only getting rid of kanji without doing anything else would be crummy.

[WoHenNi]

All I can say is:

If Japan gets rid of kanji, someone better take it for the English language. That would be awesome!

[robhol]

Originally Posted by WoHenNi

All I can say is:

If Japan gets rid of kanji, someone better take it for the English language. That would be awesome!

Now don't make me hurt you..

[konbini]

It would be bad to abolish kanji just to make it easier for foreigners. However, translations into Hiragana like at Tokyo Metro are a great idea and there should be more use of it. But I always like to see the Kanji for town names, it makes you feel that you are in another country. I do believe that foreigners will be of increasing importance to the Japanese economy, but those who permanently live there should have at least a basic understanding of kanji. Abolishing kanji would be like abolishing an important part of Japanese culture.

[hadron]

I think japanese should write kanji everywhere where possible,

just imagine if the planet Earth is attacked by alien life-form from space, they would certainly try to infiltrate our infrastructure and defenses. and that is possible only if you understand a language, so it is obvious latin based languages would be deciphered very easily but i doubt aliens would beat kanji so if at least japan survive the first impact, that might save our civilisation in future