Should Japan abolish kanji?
 

Hi all! You know, I've been thinking... should Japan still be using kanji (Chinese characters), limit their usage, or get rid of them altogether?
The Japanese language may have to continue using kanji, because it's been culturally important to the language, ever since the written language began. Many Japanese words are derived from Chinese, and despite several spelling reforms throughout the ages, kanji continue to be used. Kanji tell readers what words mean, and help people to understand the concept of Sino-Japanese words and sounds and native Japanese ones (on'yomi and kun'yomi). There are many homophones in Japanese, so kanji is needed to distinguish words. For learners of Japanese, learning new kanji can help with learning new words.
In South Korea, Chinese characters are no longer commonly used to write the Korean language (North Korea has banned them altogether). Although the young generation of South Korea are still taught Chinese letters, and that Chinese letters are still used to write formal documents and newspapers in Korean, many Koreans don't know that many, and usually can only spell their names in hangul (Korean letters). If South Korea has used this "middle-road" policy, then there shouldn't be any reason why Japan can't do the same with their language.
However, it may make sense to ban kanji altogether, as they are just so many to learn and remember, and would only make it harder for foreigners to learn Japanese. (With their currently ageing population, Japan need foreign workers, but the foreigners need to be able to speak, read and write in Japanese.) If there are so many homophones in Japanese, and kanji help distinguish similar sounding words, then what about spoken Japanese? Kanji don't come out of peoples' mouths, so you have to know what people are saying. This makes it almost pointless in learning kanji as it only helps you to write and read Japanese, not to speak or listen to it. Even Japanese people can't always read other people's names in kanji, and some names can be spelt using different kanji, so why bother using them instead of kana? If Japanese already has kana, a phonetic alphabet, then why bother having 1000's of kanji to learn?
Anyway, these are some of the reasons for each of the 3 arguments. But I'm interested in hearing YOUR opinions and reasons for them, what do you think?

I don't agree that Kanji should be banned, thats like saying that they are banning their culture. Why should the country make changes to their culture for foreigners? While it is true that Japan is aging, I don't think the government's stance is to "attract" foreigners, until then, there is no reason to do anything specific to "attract" foreigners.

Just my 2 cents...

To be fair, Japan needs foreign workers to remain successful into the next century. Their population is crashing (I forget the name for this problem--人口問題 or something? maybe 高齢問題?), and they either need foreigners to support the social programs or they need women to start popping out more kids (which means serious social reforms such as cheaper education).

Obviously this comes across a bit harsh, like a foreigner riding in on his black ship to tell the Japanese how to be a better country, but I don't mean it to be that way. I just don't have the patience to deal with your flawed argument right now with the depth it deserves.

The argument is what is best for Japan, not what makes sense based on their current immigration policies. You presume that what Japan is doing currently immigration-wise is the correct policy to follow. I do not think it is. I think many Japanese do not think it is, either. Sociologists in Japan don't think so IIRC.

I had to study this at university in Japan, and I was pretty convinced Japan needs foreign workers.

But I digress.

I've been on both sides of the argument. I'm against kanji simplification, but I'm not native enough to know whether switching to all-kana is feasible. OP makes a compelling argument that it worked for the Koreas, and I don't see why it wouldn't also work for Japan.

Hell, I'd love it if kanji disappeared just because the biggest obstacle to my improved fluency would be gone overnight. Learning vocab in kana is so much easier than learning extra kanji.

Of course, once I hit about 2K kanji, I probably won't care about the difficulty of kanji much anymore.

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.

In my experience in learning Japanese Kanji has been helpful to me. I don't know that many kanji, but one thing I did knowtice that was very helpful to me is...魳, 鮃, 鯉 These are examples of kanji, they all are fish. They have a small kanji for fish within them. I know by looking at it that it is a fish. This rule doesn't apply to everything I suppose, but it did help me.

What I find hard with Kanji is that they have different readings. Which can be confuseing with peoples names.

Good point. Names would fully be a problem if Kanji were to dissipate.

No, of course not. Other than beautiful, its much easier to read a text with kanji rather than one all in hiragana (if you know the kanji).

Kanji makes japanese challenging, by learning it we are improving our brain's memory skills. Also, for me it's easier to learn new vocabulary if the words have kanji. Don't ask me why, it just sticks best.

There's the rub, and you can't just wave your hands and make that issue go away. The very crux of the argument is that it is unsustainable to count on labor who can read the kanji. You should address this issue.

I'm just playing Devil's Advocate here. :)

You are right ;). I should have been more specific.

I myself am at a very basic level, and for the level I'm at I know pretty much all the kanji. I wish I had more time to study (I could be so much better... too bad my course doesn't allow me to...:()

I do not believe the getting rid of Kanji would be a good idea. For many reasons already stated, like visual recognition, ease of separation between words and particles etc.

I believe people who argue for the abolition of Kanji using the "hey look at Korea" argument, may have some flaws in their reasoning.

Now I do not know very much about Korean, so I could be totally wrong here, but my first assumption would be that the abandonment/phasing out of Hanja (Kanji) had less to do with smoothing out education, and more to do with national pride and political issues. Therefore using Korean as a prop for the "make Japanese language education easier" point of view does not necessarily hold much water.

My second argument is that Korean and Japanese are different languages, yes they have their similarities, but just because something might be working out for one, does not mean it will just magically work for the other.

Now I do not know Korean, so I can only argue with what I have observed so far about the language.

Hangul and Kana, are not really comparable as writing systems. Just looking at Hangul you can tell it is more complex and allows for greater distinction in pronunciation and word formation. As this next quote explains:

"The organization of Hangul syllables—with individual phonemes clustered into a syllable, rather than organized in a horizontal line as in English—is thought by some observers to be a powerful reading aid. Because of the clustering of syllables, words are shorter on the page than their linear counterparts would be, and the boundaries between syllables are easily visible (which may aid reading, if segmenting words into syllables is more natural for the reader than dividing them up into phonemes). [25] Because the component parts of the syllable are relatively simple phonemic characters, the number of strokes per character on average is lower than in Chinese characters. Unlike syllabaries, such as Japanese kana, or Chinese logographs, none of which encode the constituent phonemes within a syllable, the graphic complexity of Korean syllabic blocks varies in direct proportion with the phonemic complexity of the syllable. [26] Unlike linear alphabets such as English, the Korean orthography allows the reader to "utilize both the horizontal and vertical visual fields"; [27] finally, since Hangul syllables are represented both as collections of phonemes and as unique-looking graphs, they may allow for both visual and aural retrieval of words from the lexicon." Wapedia - Wiki: Hangul.

In short Hangul is much more effective as a stand alone reading tool than Kana is. Therefore purging Kanji from Japanese would most certainly not enhance its readability based upon these observations.

Last I would like to comment on the "Kanji doesn't fly out your mouth when you talk argument". I do not see how this is really a practical argument. Verbal comprehension and reading comprehension are totally different skills, or were all those language classes we took in school to help us learn to read and enhance our ability just an illusion?? There is a reason formal edjumucation was started.

In addition, spoken and written languages can sometimes be totally different can they not? Japanese constantly omit particles and shorten words when they speak. And lots of times there are many words that are just typically not used in spoken language. So I just don't see how saying that because people can verbally understand each other without Kanji, removing Kanji from the written language would necessarily be a good thing, or acceptable.

I know that many new learners may feel that Kanji is the bane of their existence, but patience and practice will payoff someday, and you will see that Kanji is your friend and probably the greatest tool the language has to offer you in helping to improve your reading comprehension and vocabulary.

I read a LOT. In both Japanese and in English.
I cannot imagine trying to muck through kana only text... Nor can I imagine trying to muck through English devoid of spaces, capitalization, and punctuation.

justtrytorelaxandreadthroughasentencelikethiswithoutanyhintstowhereanything beginsandsendswithproperpunctuationthereisntmuchofaproblemevenwhenthelevela ndcomplexityofthesubjectmatterincreasesyesiamsurethateveryonewillbeabletore adthisjustasiamsurethatanyonecouldreadajapanesesentencewrittenonlyinkanabut itcertainlyisnteasyanditcertainlyisntsmoothgoingevenastheonewhotypedthisupr eadingoverittocheckfrotyposispainfulworkandthisisenglishjapaneselackingkanj iwouldbeevenmoreofapainasitreliesonthecharactersmuchmoretoconverymeaningeng lishiscompleteaslongasthespellingiscorrect

Yeah, lots of fun to read... :mtongue:

The presence of Kanji doesn`t slow down or hinder a reader - it does the opposite. Anything above picture book level is a pain to read without it. Sure, for a Japanese learner who only knows one meaning for one sound pattern it may be easy - especially with words split by spaces - but when there are many possible meanings and when you can`t be sure even where one word ends and another begins... I would HATE to read anything in all kana - let alone something with real substance.

こうかかれてるほうがよみやすいとおもってるなんて･ ･･わたしにはりかいできない。かいわじゃたしかにか んじがつかわれることはないけど、そのかわりにいろん なヒント（カタカナはまだつかってもいいよね？）があ ったり、ふめいなてんがあればすぐにきくことができる 。よんでるときはかんぜんにいっぽうてきでめのまえに かかれてるものからすべてのじょうほうをとりだすしか ない。そとからみて「めんどうくさいから」ってりゆう でどこかのげんごをかえたいなんてばかげてるとおもう 。

No fun reading that either. It was a total pain to type out, and just like with the no punctuation English it felt so strange and frustrating that I`m sure I made a number of mistakes that it is too much of a pain to read through to find.

ETA;

This makes me think of the quizzes they occasionally have on TV asking people to guess what a sentence really means... The most recent one I saw was "You get a message on your phone from a friend - what is she talking about?!"
きのうのかんそうきかして

I agree with you complete. But if one were to truly reform Japanese orthography, I'm sure it wouldn't be limited to just getting rid of kanji. There are a ton of ways you could make Japanese more readable (some Korean-style reform would be scientifically apt, but culturally impossible). You could put spaces between words (but you'd have to define what those are) or do something else.

Hell, you might be able to adapt hangul to Japanese. We know Hangul works.

But like has been said already
1. this is not going to happen;
2. there are advantages to kanji;
3. getting rid of kanji would be a response to economic and population trends, not to make the language easier for Japanese people

See
Basic English - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Special English - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
for examples of what could be done to make Japanese more accessible to immigrants (assuming Japan eventually opens up its doors to immigrants in wider numbers due to economic pressure)

Now I'm not an expert, but my understanding based on a couple semesters of Japanese sociology and demography is that there are significant population problems in Japan due to its remarkably low birthrate, and if Japanese guys and girls don't start popping them out, they're going to need a foreign source of labor to support its social programs. Perhaps take in immigrants on worker visas that are good for a decade or five years or something, but deny them social welfare program benefits, to increase what pays out to citizens without having temporary immigrants being a drain.

But I only have a semester of immigration studies under my belt, so I'm a dilettante. :)

The topic of immigration pops up a LOT in the Kanji discussion... But why? Is Kanji REALLY stopping people from coming to Japan? Does the difficulty of English stop people from immigrating to the US or the UK?

It`s policy, NOT language that governs this. The examples of Basic English and Simplified English are fine examples, but I don`t see them in any type of usage that would actually influence immigration. And if they are good examples of making a language more accessible - then the NHK programming for foreigners using a set of so many simple grammatical patterns and a limited vocabulary should also be considered.

The thing is, there tend to be two sets of foreigner groups in Japan. Those who want to and do learn the language, and those that don`t care to and do not. Those who don`t care to and don`t feel the desire to are not going to benefit from any immigrant aimed simplification - and those that want to and do learn the language will only get a small advantage in the very early stages of learning. Natives aren`t going to make the switch, so any desire to do business with the rest of the country will necessitate proficiency in "native Japanese".

Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree that Japan is facing a population crisis. My point is that while Japan is facing a population crisis, the government's stance isn't to just open the country up to consume foreigners, that said, there is no real need to create anything to "attract" foreigners. Just remember that, when financials go under in an organizations, the foreigners are the first to go, that should be enough indication of how much the Japanese government or society "cherish" their added population by foreigners

Look at the country I live in, we are very very relax with our immigration law, in fact, Canada is known to have the most diversified culture. A lot of immigrants in this country doesn't speak a word of English at all for the same reason - its too difficult for them. We don't just go and abolish the use of English.........

I don't see how abolishing Kanji would attract foreigners anyways. Either you are going to move to Japan for business opportunities and not bother to learn Japanese (which many businessmen do) or you are going to move to Japan because you enjoy the country and want to live there, in which case you will probably try and learn Japanese. I doubt anyone thinks they are going to learn Japanese and then quits because Kanji is too difficult and then decides not to move to Japan.

Sane people stop learning Japanese because particles make no sense, not Kanji.

You're creating a false dichotomy. I hope by switching out countries and languages you can understand that there is a third type of person you've not accounted for: laborers from poor nations. I've repeatedly said in this thread that my understanding from school is that Japan has a problem with a lack of laborers and population in general to support their economy. So it's not that Japan needs more CEOs. It's that Japan needs more laborers.

Second, no one is suggesting that people will not immigrate because they didn't learn Japanese. I'm suggesting people will not integrate if Japanese literacy is too unattainable.

And I think the difference between Muslims in France versus in the US is a good illustration of how vitally important integration is to social stability.

Again, I'm not telling Japan how to run its economy and immigration affairs. I'm playing Devil's Advocate with the little bit of demography I know.

Well, whether that is true or not, I would think this would only apply to the first generation. The children of these laborers, if they stay in Japan, I imagine will not have the same issue with the language their parents might have.

Great! Maybe next we should abolish words in the English language, and instead write them out as sounds!

Dohzthisreedwel?bet-erthuhnwurdz,uhmahyrahyt?

If you think reading English is at all comparable to reading Japanese, you must be a Kanji Master Man.

I don't think anyone actually expects Japan to allow so many immigrants to stay and gain permanent resident status. Did you see how they recently paid Japanese citizens of Brazilian birth (IIRC) to move out of the country?

I would expect Japan to allow more laborers into the country on a temporary worker visa basis. There would be no "second generation."

But yes, if there were a second generation, then you are completely correct.

UHHH.. I am gonna assume you meant to quote me on this one. :) Yes, I do remember Brazilians getting paid to leave, and not come back. Kind of sad in my opinion. But I guess it is true that there are probably many conservative Japanese politicians that feel it is their duty to keep the Japanese race "pure".

It will be interesting to see how Japan chooses to deal with it's population issues over the next few decades. Will progressive thinkers win out completely someday, or will the remnant attitudes passed down from grandfather to grandson from Japan's darker times continue to have their say policy making??

My extremely rudimentary knowledge of Japanese politics is that the until-recently ruling party (LDP) had as its base rural farmers and people like that—basically, conservatives—like the Republican party in the US.

When I lived in Japan, one of my professors lectured about it (could have been a leftist prof for all I know) and about how it's cheaper to give bread as part of school lunches, but since the LDP's base includes rice farmers, no one has the political will to dump all over the rice farmers and switch to bread.

Not sure if it's true. I repeat that my knowledge of Japanese politics is rudimentary. I started reading Japanese newspaper articles just to pick some stuff up.

/isawoman

It's not completely comparable, but from what I know, Kanji tells meaning, and is easier to sight read. Words also tell meaning (at least, in the some cases) and are easier to sight read. Kana is pronounciatinon/sound, and the example I posted are merely the pronounciation/sound of words.

Also, apparently you think it's at least somewhat comparable, since you commented on Nyororin's post, who posted a similar example, and agreed with him/her completely ;)

What? You've basically said yourself that people immigrate to the US for job opportunities without bothering to learn English. That pretty much proves my point that Kanji doesn't stop people from moving to Japan for job opportunities.

Unless your point was that lack of English proficiency stops immigration, but I hope not.

I think you may be reading the word "integrate" as "immigrate," because I used both in the post. My comment is not that immigration will decrease, but that those here will not adequately integrate in order to maintain social stability.

Regardless, every time I post here I feel weirder and weirder since this is so ridiculously off-topic in my opinion. I'm going to stop coming to this thread. Talk amongst yourselves. ;)

This is a quite interesting subject. While I guess kanji are important enough language- and culture-wise to make a complete ban kind of undesirable, you can't really deny that memorizing thousands of them is a huge pain in the ass and a potential deterrent for people who'd like to learn the language.

I think that banning them is way too drastic, though, even if they are quite annoying sometimes. On one hand, that'd make the job of learning Japanese so much easier, but on the other hand it is, for better or for worse, part of the language and to a degree the culture. Limiting the ones in common use (further, i.e.) might not be a bad idea, though.

Or maybe they should just make furigana mandatory. :p

if you want to stop immigration then just ban all kana, and go to an all kanji written language, and no simplified characters either, but then you would get a mass immigration from taiwan, and hk.... maybe.

A lot of immigrants to the US do not speak English. Your argument does not hold water. People move for money.

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.

We Koreans do not use Chinese Characters 24/7.... but it's very important to understand Chinese Characters if you are willing to understand harder vocabularies.

No Chinese Characters = Very impossible advance to higher level of Korean

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

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. ;)

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.

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.

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.

All I can say is:

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

Now don't make me hurt you..
:D

kanji is good
 

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.

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 :vsign: