Does Japanese Really Need Kanji?

Is the kanji system necessary to the Japanese language?


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Lestat84

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I have been considering this for awhile as it's one of the things that has really De-motivated me to learn Japanese. So my question is: does the Japanese language really need kanji? Isn't it good enough to just stick with the kana and Institute spaces or something? I do understand the cultural implications of kanji, but Korea did it when they removed the hanja system from their education. It just makes sense to me that Japan might do this too. Or do Japanese people like the kanji system and find it integral?
 
If I remember correctly, the jouyou list began as the first stage of an attempt to reduce the number of kanji eventually to zero, but ran into so many problems and resistance that they stopped it there.
 
It's absolutely necessary for the current language. Sure, if you forced the Japanese people to -not- use Kanji, a lot of the homonyms that mostly only appear in written form anyway would disappear from use in favor of longer kun-yomi words or katakana loan words with similar meanings. However, the modern adult written form of the language would be horribly difficult to understand without kanji.

As it is, though, the only people seriously interested in eliminating kanji from Japanese are foreign learners of the language who don't want to put in the effort to learn them. That group is not very likely to affect Japanese policy.

Also, Hanja are still used. Just because they aren't taught in school doesn't mean that people stopped using them and didn't make older books go away. It just makes it harder for young people to read.
 
Also Korean has a lot more sounds available than Japanese, so there is much less of a problem with ambiguous homophones. It's more suited to phonetic writing than Japanese is.
 
I see what you guys mean. I don't want to sound like one of those who isn't willing to put in the effort. I was just curious as to what people thought about it. My understanding of the Japanese language is far too little for me to say one way or the other with anything other than an outside perspective. Someone said it would be difficult to understand Japanese without kanji. I'm curious why you say that.
 
This will shock the hell out of some people here...but Japanese actually could speak Japanese before there was any writing system at all!

And telegrams used to be all katakana. Somehow, people understood!

No. Technically kanji is NOT necessary. If it is deemed desirable is another matter ENTIRELY.

Personally, my feeling is that old people hate change and don't want their knowledge to be rendered obsolete. So they hang on and force it on young people where possible.

Doing away with kanji will require more than just adding spaces, but it can be done.

Homonyms? Big deal. We got plenty in English as well. To, too and two. Name me three Japanese homonyms and I will show you how handle them with no kanji.
 
Someone said it would be difficult to understand Japanese without kanji. I'm curious why you say that.

If you have a decent romaji dictionary, you will be fine. Kanji is nothing more than interesting, and that interest blinds people to its actual usefulness. Its like a work of art by Picasso. Its interesting. Worth millions? No freaking way. A cruise ship is worth millions.
 
I think you make a great point mark of zorro. Kanji has the whole historical and artistic fascination about it. It should be preserved, but I do feel its actual usefulness is questionable. Mark of zorro really hit the nail on the head. Of course it'd be a huge uphill battle to get rid of the kanji. Are there any native Japanese here who have an opinion on this, or at least know if there are native Japanese who dislike kanji?
 
In my own experience, for as long as I know all the kanji in a paragraph, it'll be faster for me to read the paragraph with Kanji, compared to a paragraph with all kana only. In kanji, if you memorize the character and the words, in one glimpse you will already know what that is, compared to kana, that you will be needing to read all characters one by one, and remember, it has no spaces.
 
compared to kana, that you will be needing to read all characters one by one, and remember, it has no spaces.

That is only because you are not used to reading all kana. Its the same when people begin learning in English. In fact, its the same when you begin learning kanji; you stare it for a while. But when you get used to it you can sight read. Its the same with any writing system so long as it is written in a way that allows for sight reading. And that is where Japanese muck it up. Even when they add spaces, they tend to attach the particles with the word. For example:

かのじょが すしを たべた。 Failure to separate the particles has interfered with the ability to sight read. It should be:

かのじょ が すし を たべた。 That way "kanojo" and "sushi" are always written the same and your brain memorizes it whole. Of course I realize that in English spellings change for plurals, but that is just one extra variation of the word to memorize. Japanese particles have は、が、を、に、で、の plus combos like ので、 etc. and its just too many variations. Verbs will also suffer for variations, but its still within acceptable limits for facilitation of sight reading I believe.
 
Theres no way kanji is needed. Its basically like reading it out loud. If a japanese person can say something outloud and completely understand it, then if they read it, its not any different(I think). There will be words where sure there is multiple kanjis with the same pronounciation, but this can be figured out by context. Is this desirable? I don't think so, it makes it harder for learners in my opinion, who have a hard time distinguishing between contexts due to not being in the native environment or inexperience. Ideal, probably not. Do-able, yeah easily for native speakers.

Then again languages are not created so they can be learned by a specific group of people easier except mabye japanese which is a bit easier for people who can read and write chinese characters.
 
There are 14 homonyms for そうかん - 「そうかん」の検索結果 - Yahoo!辞書 - and that's just in the freely available dictionary, 中 dictionary and on my first stab. All I need to do is and match pronunciations in two parts from common readings かん、けん、かい、けい、そう、さん、しゅう and I can usually find a (long) list of homonyms. The scale doesn't even begin to compare to for/four or to/two/too.

Given sufficient context, of course the words can be distinguished without kanji. However, I think you'd find that when quoting small excerpts of written works even natives won't be able to straight out understand it - although the person doing the reading will likely recognize an ambiguous situation and provide a clarifying comment.

Of course Japanese was spoken before there was a written language, but -that- Japanese didn't have on-yomi compound words in it. Aside from the homonym issue of these words, the kanji act much like greek and latin roots in English - they are one of the keys to learning a word in context by how it's written. Remove the kanji and now you've got nothing but senseless homonyms with such short pronunciations that you can't really get any 'root word' clues.

That's why I say, if you forced people to do without kanji they would drop many sino-Japanese words in favor of older words or loan words from non-kanji languages. Without the kanji the words will just be difficult and have to be qualified and described all the time and in a natural language that kind of difficulty is quickly smoothed over by a change in habit... especially when there are greek, latin, and english loan words for all manner of technical terms anyway. Maybe new native words would be coined as well, who knows, but -something- would have to give.

So yes, you -can- communicate in -a- Japanese language without kanji, but adding kanji to the language drastically changed it and taking them away would drastically change it again. The language -as it is now- needs kanji.

I disagree that adding particles to words when spacing them is a mistake, as well. One of those native japanese homonyms that's rather famous is 橋・端・箸 (はし) - but these cannot all be distinguished audibly until you put them in context. In context, the pitch-accent 1 and pitch-accent 2 word become different because post-position particles take on pitch-accent relative to the word they attach to.
Theoretically, we could consider post-position particles a form of declination, and treat them as part of the words they attach to; it's just that the current way of looking at them involves a lot less cases to actively memorize. It doesn't make them any less tightly bound as a word unit to the word they follow - witness how even in strange sentence inversions and reorderings the particle sticks to its word almost like it was part of it. I find separating the particle from its word strangely unjapanese and harder to read, personally.
 
I disagree that adding particles to words when spacing them is a mistake, as well. One of those native japanese homonyms that's rather famous is 橋・端・箸 (はし) - but these cannot all be distinguished audibly until you put them in context. In context, the pitch-accent 1 and pitch-accent 2 word become different because post-position particles take on pitch-accent relative to the word they attach to.

Accent marks fix that easy. They have them in French and Spanish and they work just fine. One tiny stroke of the pen. Finished.

The particles are separate words just like the, of, for, a, etc. We separate them in English for good reason. Adding the particle to the word would be like writing "Thecat is onthereroof. It would be a mess. Same with Japanese.

Hit the rest later.
 
Thanks for correcting me. Anyway, I guess I'm not the one to talk her because I'm no expert. But just based on my experience, I find it easier to read with kanji considering that I know it. :sorry:
 
If you have a decent romaji dictionary, you will be fine. Kanji is nothing more than interesting, and that interest blinds people to its actual usefulness. Its like a work of art by Picasso. Its interesting. Worth millions? No freaking way. A cruise ship is worth millions.
You really do say some stupid things.
Saying Kanji is not useful, again shows your lack of understanding of the written language.

I think you make a great point mark of zorro. Kanji has the whole historical and artistic fascination about it. It should be preserved, but I do feel its actual usefulness is questionable. Mark of zorro really hit the nail on the head. Of course it'd be a huge uphill battle to get rid of the kanji. Are there any native Japanese here who have an opinion on this, or at least know if there are native Japanese who dislike kanji?

Yeah, I just asked 10 of my staff (All Japanese) and everyone of them said that they could not do without Kanji. They all said it would makes things too difficult, too time consuming.
 
I find it easier to read with kanji considering that I know it.

That is exactly it! That sentiment leads to opposition to reform that would be beneficial to future generations. And to think, that at one time Japanese was ALL kanji and no hiragana or katakana! Did people oppose adding hiragana? Of course they did! And so many for that very reason that they were "used to it the way it is". If they had won, Japanese writing as we know it know would not exist.
 
Yeah, I just asked 10 of my staff (All Japanese) and everyone of them said that they could not do without Kanji. They all said it would makes things too difficult, too time consuming.

Like asking a farmer from 4000 B.C. if he could do without his hoe, but not bothering to show him the horse and plow you want to sell him. Like asking a farmer from 1900 if he could do without his horse and plow, but not bother to show him the gasoline tractor you want to sell him.

Maybe you should try asking your oracles, I mean coworkers, a non-biased open question? You know, instead of the highly biased yes or no question. Try asking them if it would be possible to reform writing to the point that Japanese could be written in all kana and be useful, like English is written in all alphabet?

Of course, you might consider how much real experience your coworkers have with all phonetic writing systems. I am sure a number of them think we are all idiots, and we must be, to have such a simple writing system.

You really do say some stupid things.

Well since YOU say so, I KNOW what I say must be pretty good!
 
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There are 14 homonyms for そうかん - 「そうかん」の検索結果 - Yahoo!辞書 - and that's just in the freely available dictionary, 中 dictionary and on my first stab. All I need to do is and match pronunciations in two parts from common readings かん、けん、かい、けい、そう、さん、しゅう and I can usually find a (long) list of homonyms. The scale doesn't even begin to compare to for/four or to/two/too.

An extreme example. Most Japanese words don't have so many homonyms. And so many of them just are not common. My romaji dictionary only has four homonyms for soukan, a grand sight, an inspector general, repatriate and a first issue. I seriously doubt the rest are so useful.

So lets look at an extreme example in English, the word bear.

Bear | Define Bear at Dictionary.com

8 meanings, although 1 and 2 seem the same to me. All common use except for maybe one of them.

And we have the homonym bare. Bare | Define Bare at Dictionary.com

6 meanings. All common use.

Yet we get by.

Just as we spell bear and bare differently, so could Japanese do to soukan. Inspector general and first issue and others could be written as ソウカン and grand view and repatriate could be written as そうかん. And before you claim that katakana is reserved for loan words, that is a misconception, and the tendency to do so is a modern invention. Katakana is and has always been more flexible.

Even if we don't use katakana, accent marks may differentiate, but I don't know exactly for homonyms of soukan and neither dictionary says if there is an accent difference.

Besides, repatriate will invariably be written "soukan suru" as its a verb and that leave only three common use meanings to differentiate as far as I know.

Anyway, there are solutions if one is willing to look for them. But I find the nay sayers on this issue are simply not willing to entertain anything that would nix their beloved kanji or make their years of study obsolete despite the obvious benefits to others. The Koreans had that very problem switching to Hangul. The "elite" (cough) did not want the masses to be able to read.
 
Maybe you should try asking your oracles, I mean coworkers, a non-biased open question? You know, instead of the highly biased yes or no question. Try asking them if it would be possible to reform writing to the point that Japanese could be written in all kana and be useful, like English is written in all alphabet.
Of course, you might consider how much real experience your coworkers have with all phonetic writing systems.
Again, your assumptions about my co-workers and I are rife.
Considering I am in the medical profession and of those staff I asked, 2 of them are Japanese doctors. I am pretty sure they have a good grasp of the phonetic writing systems, including German and English which is a prerequisite to know to become a doctor. (Why else would I be at work and able to ask staff at 7 o'clock in the morning on a Sunday) So I would consider them far more educated than you will ever be and able to make a fair and reasonable observation to make an informed opinion about the topic.

Anything is possible, you could have them change shapes like squares and triangles, but the fact remains that at present it is easier to read and understand Japanese with Kanji. We are not talking about what is possible , but what is preferred and at present, Kanji is preferred by the majority, including educational institutions and that is all that counts.
 
I think you are being unfair to mark of Zorro. The thread is kanji necessary he is arguing it isn't necessary. Furthermore it doe sent matter if you asked a 100 people. The fact of the matter is they aren't used to reading without kanji so of course they are going to say they cant imagine reading without kanji. How can they say no kanji is better if they are raised in an environment where kanji is so prevalent? I'm also troubled at how you make fun of mark of Zorro by saying these medical professionals are more informed.if anything a japanese learners opinion on this issue is of greater value, as they carry two perspectives.Sure for sure these doctors you know are well versed in kanji more than the average person, but they just aren't used to seeing it without kanji
 
I think you are being unfair to mark of Zorro. The thread is kanji necessary he is arguing it isn't necessary. Furthermore it doe sent matter if you asked a 100 people. The fact of the matter is they aren't used to reading without kanji so of course they are going to say they cant imagine reading without kanji. How can they say no kanji is better if they are raised in an environment where kanji is so prevalent? I'm also troubled at how you make fun of mark of Zorro by saying these medical professionals are more informed.if anything a japanese learners opinion on this issue is of greater value, as they carry two perspectives.Sure for sure these doctors you know are well versed in kanji more than the average person, but they just aren't used to seeing it without kanji

Frustrated Dave is at least true to his name, a frustrated guy, so it's best to just ignore his need to spat with people.

Anyway, I agree with what Chris wrote about homonyms. There are an absurd amount of them in Japanese. In conversation you can manage without much confusion, but written Japanese would be far harder to understand without kanji. There are cases where I couldn't actually say what I'm reading, but I know the meaning anyway. And I can (mostly) read a Chinese menu now without speaking a word of Chinese. This is great.

There is a story about Europeans coming to China, and asking them to use Roman letters so that they could pronounce their words, and instead the Chinese recommended Europeans learn kanji, so they could understand the meanings of all the books in Europe without speaking the tongue. Obviously both sides disagreed.

I think kanji, though laborious to learn, is a highly efficient system once you have it down. Removing it would damage the language, and hurt people's ability to communicate. Plus, kanji is used in parts of the culture, like word-play in English, which becomes a unique part of the culture.
 
I agree. btw nahadef out of curiousity are you fluent in reading japanese (i.e newspapers and stuff) out of curiousity :?

But you know I sometimes wonder about 6 and 7 year old's, when they read things like manga. I'm sure alot of these kids read manga's with full of robots and tech savy vocab that foreign students who study Japanese for many years will never know. All these manga have furigana beside each kanji even stuff like 行く, and at that age they probably know very little kanji ( I think), but they have ALOT of vocabulary, so they can understand it by reading the furigana. I mean this is why furigana is put on shounen comics and popular ones, isnt it? So kids can read it, I doubt they have any trouble reading it despite the wordiness of some manga and knowing barely any kanji at all. Maybe ignorance is bliss after all 😌

I agree completely, it would probably take alot out of the culture and alot of things would become harder. I guess I am on the middle ground after hearing all this.
 
We are not talking about what is possible ,

However educated your colleagues may be, believe me, I am fully cognizant of the fact that whatever question is asked is filtered through you, and whatever comes back is again filtered through you. You don't even know what this thread is about. Yes, we are talking about what is possible, for crap's sake.
 
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