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Japanese natives: forgetting Kanji

JudithEvans

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A question from a journalist - aimed at native Japanese speakers or those who've been speaking Japanese most of their life. Do you find that you sometimes forget how to write kanji, because you mainly write using computers and cellphones which use hiragana, katakana or the Roman alphabet for inputting words? If so, I'd be keen to hear your thoughts on this! Thank you. (Judith Evans, Agence France-Presse, Hong Kong)
 
You might want to try the Kanji section of the forum as well. I would also like to say a few things about this subject as well.

I do not fit the criteria above, but with English there are different forms of words and a lot of ways to convey a sentence; different words, same meaning. Kanji I view more as a symbol then a word. A symbol for person, and one for a mountain; but unlike symbols, kanji holds sounds that are associated with the symbol, so the kanji for mountain is seen as "the symbol for mountain", but "spoken as 'Yama'.

Now, with the long-distance relationship that is shared with Japan and the United States and the mixing of cultures. We are seeing a simplifying of the language, were instead of using a 'symbol' for mountain, they just say 'mountain'.

The reason could be that the mixing of cultures is causing Japan to assimilate new English words into their language, but at the cost of forgetting their Kanji which is old Chinese 'symbol words'.

We're maybe seeing Japan in the process of re-creating their language.

Casual cursive writing is pretty much gone in America except for when dealing with business, and that is usually only with writing your name. I believe typewriters are what did it if I'm not mistaken, and as we used less pen and paper we started to forget our "calligraphy".

Will someone practicing English try and learn English cursive?

People in villages will have little access to electronics, people in cities have to much exposure.
So how it effects them I don't know, but villages might write less but use more "traditional" forms of writing when they do, and cities write more and use more "modern" forms of words for communication.

So, interactions between cultures and simpler forms of communications cause a change in language I believe....

Hope that could help!
 
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