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Help do we need to use kanji all the time?!!

foroozan

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14 Sep 2016
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hey guys
I was trying to memorize some kanji characters...and made me think, do Japanese really use some of them ,I mean some words like 後 take more time than writing it in kana and imagine that you're taking some notes and you need to be as fast as you can.....my question is ,in these situations ,they don't use kanji right?or because I'm not Japanese, it's difficult ?!!:sorry::sorry:
 
Not because you're not Japanese. Because you're very new to it and have very little experience with it or exposure to it.
Thank you...So they use every small words in their kanji form?even if they wanna write Sth very quickly?
 
Usually if there is a kanji for what they're writing they will use the kanji. There are exceptions though. 為る (する) "to do" is normally written in kana even though there is kanji for it.
 
Thank you...So they use every small words in their kanji form?even if they wanna write Sth very quickly?

You are assuming kanji can't be written quickly because you can't write them quickly.

You are also probably assuming that everyone writes every stroke of every character and tries to write clearly. This is not how things are at all. People use many shortcuts when they are writing by hand. I don't know if you have had a chance to see much handwritten Japanese, but it can be very difficult for foreigners to read because we are used to learning from neatly printed fonts.

I am attaching images of some hastily scribbled notes on documents I had at work in the past couple of weeks. I took photos because I thought they were very good examples of how Japanese people rapidly write kanji when they don't have time to write more clearly. The kanji in them aren't difficult at all, but I suspect many foreign learners would have trouble recognizing them, especially without any context.

IMG_2611.JPG
IMG_2610.JPG
IMG_2612.JPG


Also, people have their own individual habits and widely varying degrees of familiarity with kanji. Just because a person is Japanese doesn't mean their DNA gives them magical kanji powers. Lots of Japanese people struggle with kanji and have an inadequate knowledge of them. Many Japanese find kanji just as difficult as you do. The advantages they have are that they are native speakers of the language, that they have far far far more exposure to it, and they have to be functional in a country where kanji are everywhere. Foreign learners will never be the first one, will find it almost impossible to catch up on the second one, and in many cases just choose to go through life in Japan essentially illiterate when it comes to the third one... they just excuse themselves from literacy.
 
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All of the words I've seen where they don't use the kanji is more by it being how things have been done more so than difficulty of the characters. It's like in English why we use contractions so often. It's not that writing it that way saves a lot of time because of the contractions in English replace one character with another. It's more that's how it's done in current English. I would expect that's the same reasoning behind when Japanese don't use kanji when there is one.
I would say to most Japanese they view it as easier/more clear to always use kanji when there is one.
 
The kanji in them aren't difficult at all, but I suspect many foreign learners would have trouble recognizing them, especially without any context.
Indeed. I recognize 内, 品 and 為 - the rest might as well be Elvish...

Lots of Japanese people struggle with kanji and have an inadequate knowledge of them.
This is something that's quite comforting to witness. I watch a lot of videos of Japanese people playing video games and commenting on them, which typically involves them reading the onscreen text out loud. Usually they fly over kanji that I've never seen before at a speed that I can never hope to achieve, but from time to time they blunder. An awkward pause as they try to recall a character's reading. Using the wrong readings (無精者 as "museisha" instead of "bushoumono"). Giving up and using a synonym (境界 as "hazama" instead of "kyoukai"). Being utterly stumped and skipping the word altogether (朦朧).

When you see that even natives encounter difficulties while playing The Sims in their own language, you suddenly don't feel so bad anymore about needing 10 minutes to read a page in a novel :)
 
My guess on the first character is 四 but that's only a guess. I figured the last three were the most obvious though.
 
I'll go ahead and clear up the other two:

田村様
足利納品
 
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