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Roomaji-zation for the Japanese language?

Sirius2B

先輩
3 Aug 2006
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Of course, its a theme highly relevant for foreigners living in Japan, and people that after an heroic fight, gave up early trying to dominate the Japanese writting systems.

Karl Marx once said, with other words, and later was confirmed by psychologists, that "we modify what we say, in oder to agree with what we do... or we modify our beliefs in order to suit our own insterests".

Of course, that foreign people that eventually conquered the Japanese writting systems, will say that it will be "negative", there will be a shameful cultural lost... and people that simply cannot do the effort or have the time, but that NEEDS to learn Japanese to improve their quality of life in Japan, could think otherwise.

I have to say, that I have never been in Japan, but that I admire very much their traditional culture, their cultural & industrial products, and I had some interest in studying the Japanese language.

I am sure that this topic have been discussed earlier in this forum... but I guess that is a theme relevant to be touched here anytime.

I think that Kanjis are "sexy", and very appealing for the challenge alone of conquer them... but let's be honest: They are a Chinese import, that never suited well for the Japanese languaje... so much, that Japanese themselves had to come up with the Kanas, the syllabaries, to suit more easily their own needs.

Of course, I will mention the usual examples that anybody mentions in thise theme: The case of Turkey, that scraped the Arabic system... and even Russia with Cyrillic, if I remember well around the 20s, tried to do the same, although they reversed.

Hell, even the Chinese do experiments with "simplified systems", PinJin, etcetera... so I think that people, Japanese or fans of Japanse culture, don't have to go balistic if one discusses the theoretical pros and cons of such meassure.

Undoubtly, with the almost 100% literacy in Japan, there is no doubt that Japanese themselves have found the system to teach themselves the Kanji... even if it takes 9 years... but...

Could we believe that there will be an "improvement" in Japanese education to change to a real alphabet (any alphabet... even one invented by themselves)?.

Ah!... One more historical note... I remember that in 1946 or 47 (or around that time) the Ocupation Authorities wanted to precisely that (roomaji-ization)... but even as the Japanese let do reform in other fields, they defended succesfuly this part of their culture... So I want to clarify that I am not a Gaijin trying to say what is best for Japan, just to discuss a linguistic theme.

Regards.
 
If I'm mistaken (and no I have done no research on this. This is based purely on latent knowledge gained over a period of years), the Japanese themselves were looking into turning the Japanese writing system into an all romaji system, but it never worked because there are far too many homophones in Japanese for it to work effectively.

For example, if I write

tounan

what does it mean?

How about "kougai"?

Other languages have the same issue, (for example "watch" in English), but in Japanese it covers a much larger percentage of vocabulary. If you put these words into romanization, you end up with a zillion homonyms to boot. Open up a Japanese dictionary (Japanese-Japanese), and you'll see what I mean.
 
If I'm mistaken (and no I have done no research on this. This is based purely on latent knowledge gained over a period of years), the Japanese themselves were looking into turning the Japanese writing system into an all romaji system, but it never worked because there are far too many homophones in Japanese for it to work effectively.

For example, if I write
tounan
what does it mean?
How about "kougai"?

Other languages have the same issue, (for example "watch" in English), but in Japanese it covers a much larger percentage of vocabulary. If you put these words into romanization, you end up with a zillion homonyms to boot. Open up a Japanese dictionary (Japanese-Japanese), and you'll see what I mean.

Yes, I have heard of this reason before. But then I respond: If they are homophones, how does the Japanese could differentiate among them when they speak... if they are HOMOPHONES? ;)

I guess, by context, or intonation. I think, that it will work the same in writting.

On the contrary... one of the problems learning Japanese with Kanji... is that, differently from the Chinese Hanzi ("One symbol = One sound") the problem, at least for foreigners, is precisely the great number of homophones "chinese" readings in Japanese.

Really really... what about this other reason: Kanjis have in Japan, a cultural prestige that Roman characters do not have.

And simply, conservatism.

On the other hand... let me tell you that the foreigners that learn a symbolic/logographic system, experience things... let's say, with more dept, than reading with a plain phonetic alphabet.

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On the other hand...

I want to tell to the Japanese-residing foreigners in the forum, that learning Kanji using Japanese methods (endless repetition of meaningless patterns) is the more sure way to end up frustrated, as a foreign adult learning Japanse.

There had been advances, invented in more scientific ways of learning "Kanji for foreigners" in recent decades, like the Heisig method.

I myself know just 1000 Kanjis, but I started just 6 months ago.

Regards.
 
Japanese already has two alphabets. But actually why should they now change their writing system? It's not like Turkey or the 16c. Korea where the literacy was very low. If the writing system is now changed it will only cause confusion.

Also I believe in the fact that the language belongs to the people not to the government. Change shouldn't be forced on society. Actually the people themselves will "decide" in a chaotic way what their language will evolve to anyways. Waporo for example has already a strong impact on the kanji abilities of Japanese people (and academics in Japanese area studies).
 
Yes, I have heard of this reason before. But then I respond: If they are homophones, how does the Japanese could differentiate among them when they speak... if they are HOMOPHONES? ;)
I guess, by context, or intonation. I think, that it will work the same in writting.
Trust me, it won't work. For one thing, spoken words in normal, everyday conversation as a percentage of the body of the language is a very, very low ratio. I don't know about Chinese -- but it is much smaller than English. For another, rarely-used, new, or difficult phrases, even in spoken contexts without a visual display of the kanji commonly need to be broken down and their component parts analogized or otherwise explained to the audience. Information in kanji homophones that are at times interchangable but contain important differences of connotation in other contexts would be lost and result in even potential serious misunderstandings.

It would also take forever to read, read, and re-read this way, not to mention there is no writing system of any language built primarily to accomodate the needs of foreign learners. It's an absolutely ridiculous rationale to throw a design which is working well into utter chaos. 😌
 
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Japanese already has two alphabets. But actually why should they now change their writing system? It's not like Turkey or the 16c. Korea where the literacy was very low. If the writing system is now changed it will only cause confusion.
Hallo, Tanuki otoko... Ich will Ihnen sagen, dass Japanish wahrlich ist nicht die einzige Fremdsprache, die mich interessiert :) .

Regarding that Japanese have two alphabets... well, I guess that the Kanas could be considered as that, given the limited phonological needs of Japanese... and that as we speak, katakana is undergoing some changes to accomodate foreign sounds... actually then, the question would be more in the easyness of internationalization of the Japanese language.

Even as learning foreign alphabets like Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Cyrillic, etcetera, is extremely much more easy than learning the Kanji/Hanzi... even so these different alphabets represent a barrier for the "internationalization" of many languages. Guess that we leave in a Roman-character oriented world, and that will be a reason for reflection, at other level that mere linguistics...

The situation in Turkey was in my view more ideological than practical (Young Turks, Atatuk, etcetera)... in reality, Arabic is and alphabet extraordinarily efficient for hand writting. Regarding Korea... well, some say that Hangul is the most well designed alphabet in the World.

In order to be constructive in my own topic, I propose then that said internationalization have two obvious options...

1.) The increase of roomanji-zation, in the sense of increasing publications of materials, that at least will give the opportunity of foreigners to practice and appreciate more the Japanese language per-se, even if that means maybe to prevent that many of them will really do an effort to dominate Japanese writting systems. That of course, is purely oriented to foreigners, having no influence in the Japanese people.

I believe that such publications as the "Hiragana News", go halfway in that direction.

2.) Much more desirable, will be to develop new methods of teaching scientifically the Kanji, oriented to foreign adults. I say that said methods exists, but suffer from an assassesination campaign from traditionalists in Japanese teaching circles, that could not admit, that the conditions of teaching children in a closed enviroment for 9 years, simply do not apply for foreign adults.

Even when there is extraordinary people with special capabilities of learning, the fact is that teaching writting/readings skills to foreigners is extremely difficult with Japanese traditional methods.

Guess that a recent very successful movie appeared recently with precisely that background.

Also I believe in the fact that the language belongs to the people not to the government. Change shouldn't be forced on society. Actually the people themselves will "decide" in a chaotic way what their language will evolve to anyways. Waporo for example has already a strong impact on the kanji abilities of Japanese people (and academics in Japanese area studies).

Yes. In reality I myself do not like at all, the option of roomaji-zation of Japan, even if there exist today some voices inside Japan that ask precisely that (e.g. The Romajikai).

Regards.
 
Trust me, it won't work. For one thing, spoken words in normal, everyday conversation as a percentage of the body of the language is a very, very low ratio. I don't know about Chinese -- but it is much smaller than English. For another, rarely-used, new, or difficult phrases, even in spoken contexts without a visual display of the kanji commonly need to be broken down and their component parts analogized or otherwise explained to the audience. Information in kanji homophones that are at times interchangable but contain important differences of connotation in other contexts would be lost and result in even potential serious misunderstandings.
It would also take forever to read, read, and re-read this way, not to mention there is no writing system of any language built primarily to accomodate the needs of foreign learners. It's an absolutely ridiculous rationale to throw a design which is working well into utter chaos. 😌

Hello Elisabeth... well, my knowledge in Japanese are still somehow below to intermediate, so I will have to advance much more, to appreciate the phenomena you describe... so I guess that you have much more experience and knowlege regarding that.

But I use again the opportunity that I just commented the possibility of roomajization just as an intellectual excercise. I do not even really like the idea.

Regards.

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Some platitudes about the (traditional) difficulty of Kanji, that is worth to remember...

SVG OPEN

Kanji as the Main Obstacle for Learning Japanese

The modern Japanese writing system is considered as one of the most complex in the world. To describe it Japanese often call it kanji kanamajiri bun (漢字仮名交じり文).

This means that Japanese normally uses the originally Chinese characters窶婆anji窶蚤nd kana (hiragana and katakana), which are cursive or shortened versions of former kanji and which now represent only the sounds of syllables. Hiragana are used for example for grammatical particles and function words; katakana are used mainly for non-Chinese loan words and names. Each set of kana consists of 48 different characters, which can be combined with diacritical marks.

It is possible to write Japanese totally in kana, but because of the large number of homophones in Japanese, this would lead to misunderstandings. During a lecture, Japanese professors write kanji on the black board to clarify what they are talking about, and Japanese television makes extensive use of subtitles. Nowadays, latin characters and roman and arabic numerals are used along with kanji and kana.

In Japanese schools, about 1,000 kanji are taught with their correct stroke order at primary school (these are the kyテエiku kanji, 教育漢字). When pupils leave compulsory school, they should know about 2,000 of them (the jテエyテエ kanji, 常用漢字). It is said that educated Japanese people know about 3,000 kanji.

The introduction of electronic writing systems has had two contradictory effects on the usage of kanji. The ability to write kanji by hand has worsened, because now handwriting is only one way to write. On the other hand, it has become very easy to write even very difficult and exotic kanji provided that one can key in their pronunciation. Today, it is mostly a passive use of kanji that is needed.

Kanji are difficult even for Japanese people. After a long stay outside of Japan, the kanji ability of Japanese people decreases. If a Japanese is asked to write a difficult kanji, she is not sure about the correct stroke order. This uncertainty then shows in the script.

For foreigners learning Japanese, it is very difficult to learn, memorize, read and write kanji. The subject is of course difficult, but to make things worse, the teaching material on kanji in western languages has often too little information on how kanji are actually written. This concerns for example stroke direction, possible variations of character forms or of their components.
 
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let's be honest: They are a Chinese import, that never suited well for the Japanese languaje...

This was true once upon a time more than 1000 years ago. But now, about 33% of all Japanese words are sino-Chinese, that is, words based on the on-yomi of kanji. As a result, the Japanese language is inextricably intertwined with kanji. It is unfortunate that kanji have so many readings. This is partly the result of Japnese's limited phonetic system, but mostly the result of borrowing readings from different dialects of Chinese at different points in history.

Homophones are the main reason why a switch to a non-kanji system would create mass hysteria. Chinese distinguishes between different words using 4 (or more) tones, and that's why pinyin can substitute fairly well for kanji (though it's used very little), but Japanese doesn't have tones, and has much fewer syllables than Chinese, so removing kanji removes far more information. But if you imagine Chinese written out without any tones, you would get a similar result.

I believe that such publications as the "Hiragana News", go halfway in that direction.
Why is this only halfway? What's the obsession with a Latin-based writing system? Hiragana is not difficult to learn, and anyone who's not going to learn at least that much is not going to have much success learning the Japanese language.
 
To the OP: Your idea would never work, and its pointless thinking about it.

Speaking works because we speak in full sentences, and you can question the speaker if you do not understand. Writing, especially signs, are often short and to the point.

Read any newspaper front page and you will see a sentence that has been hacked to pieces and had any non-relevant grammar and kanji removed to get maximum effect from minimum characters. Its because of the strength of meaning that kanji carry that such things are possible.

The three systems exist in harmony to create an effective form of conveying meanings. Signs with giant 注意! characters get a message across quickly and efficiently. Any changeover would take many years, and cause a number of problems, and with 99% (statistical FACT) of the population in Japan, being perfectly able to understand the current system, I can see no reason why they would want to change.
 
To the OP: Your idea would never work, and its pointless thinking about it.
Speaking works because we speak in full sentences, and you can question the speaker if you do not understand. Writing, especially signs, are often short and to the point.
Read any newspaper front page and you will see a sentence that has been hacked to pieces and had any non-relevant grammar and kanji removed to get maximum effect from minimum characters. Its because of the strength of meaning that kanji carry that such things are possible.
The three systems exist in harmony to create an effective form of conveying meanings. Signs with giant 窶卍才?督! characters get a message across quickly and efficiently. Any changeover would take many years, and cause a number of problems, and with 99% (statistical FACT) of the population in Japan, being perfectly able to understand the current system, I can see no reason why they would want to change.
In an impossibly hypothetical case that kanji was eliminated entirely, standard public signs and most conversational speech that can be understood in context I think for most 2nd generation users could be handled by romaji. Newspapers, books or other academic writings with a lot of difficult material -- never. There would be a mass migration to either China or Korea. 😌
 
One thing that was explained to me about the only real difference now -a -days between "nihon-shiki" romaji and "hebon-shiki" romaji is the number of key strokes needed to write them on a computer.

"Ti" becomes "chi" and "tu" becomes "tsu" so it is less work for Japanese to input on a key board using "nihon-shiki". It is also easier for Japanese kids to learn because there is less to remember.

I was taught that it is necessary for the person learning Japanese to understand and correctly pronounce the language through "kana" to properly speak the Japanese language. I have learned to agree with it as well.

It is a real pain in the butt trying to find a word in a romaji dictionary in comparison to a kana one. But then again that is just me.
 
What you say, Elisabeth is very interesting... and for my interests, this part specially

Elisabeth wrote:
In an impossibly hypothetical case that kanji was eliminated entirely...

Then... I will devote to study the remaining 1000+ that I have to study, with the certainty that it will worth the effort.

Have a nice day.
 
This is very similar to a discussion on a thread held about six-or-so months ago, so I'll just link my original thoughts here:

Should Japan Abolish Kanji?

and then post my comments as a quote. Either way, I'd take a look at this old thread if I were you. You may find some interesting answers to questions you might be considering.

The problem with kanji lies not in its cultural value, which is vast, but rather in its efficiency in the modern world. Learning it takes much longer than learning an alphabetic language and its associated phonics rules (and before you complain about English, please realize that English is a mish-mash of about 4 different languages, but it still has less phonetic rules than kanji has characters).

At the end of the Bronze Age, from Iran to Italy, every single major civilization abandoned ideogramic and syllabic scripts in favor of alphabetic ones. Cuneiform and hieroglyphics became ceremonial knowledge, held only by the priesthoods and the sages. The reason was simple: alphabets are easier to learn. In these ancient languages, a letter was almost always pronounced the same in every case that it was written, so phonics rules were simple. Learning to read was no longer the province of the priests or the aristocracy. Literacy was still low, but compared to the Bronze Age, it was much higher.

Why do I bring this up? Because, in many ways, the Japanese are still stuck in the late Bronze Age when it comes to writing. However, it does not seem to be detrimental. Now, I've never lived in Japan, and have no idea how literate or illiterate they are compared to other cultures. But it seems to me that they do not have any problems.

What is difficult, however, is the transition of their system to the modern keyboard. It is also difficult for someone who has learned to read an alphabetic system to learn an ideographic system. As ricecake pointed out, it takes twice the number of brushstrokes to write "bald" than "hair" in the original Chinese character. Some characters are simple, others are incredibly complex, requiring minute strokes to write, and requiring more energy to discern. It takes six or seven strokes to write the word "bald" out, letters and all, in English, though. So which system is more expedient?

The Chinese system is beneficial because of the vast language gaps in the country. It was devised so that it could be read from one end of the empire to the other. This is almost the equivalent of having a letter written by a man in Canada who only speaks Inuit that can be read by a man who only speaks Quebecois, American English, or Mexican Spanish.

Despite the cultural reasons to retain their traditional methods of writing, the ancient civilizations of the Near East and West all abandoned them in favor of alphabets. Even the Greeks abandoned the Linear A syllabary they had in favor of their more versatile and (for their language) appropriate alphabetic system. That the Chinese haven't is evident due to their unique situation. Even though the Koreans have developed a very unique alphabetic-style system, the Japanese have retained their traditional kanji-hiragana-katakana system, which is difficult for foreigners to learn, and cumbersome to utilize in the modern world of computers.

Perhaps some, such as Maciamo, might suggest they retain it because of its inaccessability to foreigners, suggesting insularity and ethnocentrism to be the reason they retain it. I, for one, would agree that insularity plays a small role, but it is more because of cultural pride in the uniqueness of the system, rather than ethnocentrism. It helps make Japan Japan. In addition, it seems to serve its people well (again, I am working on limited information here, though). The benefits of ease of learning and efficiency when writing or typing are not strong enough incentives to do what the Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians did.

Anyway, in regards to converting to テ崚渉シテ ("romaji"), I'd have to say that it is not the best idea. When I think about different writing systems, I often realize that they are tailored to their individual languages. If they are adopted by cultures that do not have them originally, then the writing system's values will transform to fit the language. That is the beauty of alphabets--they are universally morphic to a large degree, while syllabaries are not (anyone who has studied Linear B should especially know this).

For example, the original pronunciation of the letter "C" in Latin was like the English "K" or Greek kappa, but in English "C" is pronounced like "S" if it comes before certain vowels. That's why we mispronounce "Cicero" as "SIH-seh-roh" instead of "KIH-keh-roh", as it was originally said by the Romans.

Anyway, the point of all this is, if the Japanese adopt テ崚渉シテ (which I doubt they will), then each letter will have to have assigned values to represent Japanese phonemes, not English ones. That's why テ崚渉シテ fails for most Americans, we don't learn how to pronounce it until we learn more about actual Japanese scripts. We don't pronounce French words the same, even though they are written in the same alphabet, so why should we pronounce Japanese words the same?

It's all a matter of perception. Nevertheless, Japanese scripts better reflect the syllabic-structure of Japanese phonemes better than an alphabetic script does. It is a better reflection of the underlying psychology that goes behind the Japanese language than an alphabetic system would be. When all is said-and-done, I think converting to an alphabetic system is not necessarily beneficial, however perhaps converting solely to the syllabic scripts and abandoning kanji may make the language more accessable for foreigners to learn.
 
It's all a matter of perception. Nevertheless, Japanese scripts better reflect the syllabic-structure of Japanese phonemes better than an alphabetic script does. It is a better reflection of the underlying psychology that goes behind the Japanese language than an alphabetic system would be. When all is said-and-done, I think converting to an alphabetic system is not necessarily beneficial, however perhaps converting solely to the syllabic scripts and abandoning kanji may make the language more accessable for foreigners to learn.
A good point, and while I agree that abandoning kanji would make Japanese literacy roughly as attainable as korean in terms of being able to pronounce what is written, I think that kanji is another integral part of Japanese; the only downside is that foreigners learning the language tend to see it as more cumbersome than convenient, which could serve to keep Japanese from becoming a truly "international language." But that's another discussion altogether.

The point I wanted to make with my post was that Japanese is a moraic language, and the moraic (moreso than syllable, for the mora is the core component in Japanese speech) structure of Japanese is better suited by its current writing system than an alphabet.
 
I think romaji is better served as a learning tool along the lines of hanyu pinyin rather than as a replacement for syllabaries, much less kanji. I heartily oppose the removal of kanji, simply because the use of syllabaries alone doesn't always adequately express concepts with the same amount of clarity that kanji would (particularly when using Chinese words and homophones).

What would help the cause of romaji is a full-scale adaptation of a single romanization system (Hepburn or otherwise) rather than the current situation where there's a zillion inconsistent systems running about on signage. Of course, remember that the syllabaries themselves weren't standardized until relatively recently (as anyone who's studied any sort of classic or early modern literature could tell you), so this may indeed take a while.

Has anyone ever attempted to transliterate Japanese into either Arabic or Hebrew? Now there's something positively Sisyphean.
 
which could serve to keep Japanese from becoming a truly "international language."

Lets face it, kanji or no kanji, Japanese will never be an international language, and thats another topic on the long list of "even if hypothetical its still pointless" conversation topics.
 
Lets face it, kanji or no kanji, Japanese will never be an international language, and thats another topic on the long list of "even if hypothetical its still pointless" conversation topics.
However unlikely, you can never say "never." English began as the language of a bunch of people living on a cold, wet island in the Northeast Atlantic. Latin began as the language of a clan of sheep herders in Italy. I just hope that if Japanese does become an international language, it's not for the same reasons that English and Latin spread throughout the world.
 
A good point, and while I agree that abandoning kanji would make Japanese literacy roughly as attainable as korean in terms of being able to pronounce what is written, I think that kanji is another integral part of Japanese; the only downside is that foreigners learning the language tend to see it as more cumbersome than convenient, which could serve to keep Japanese from becoming a truly "international language." But that's another discussion altogether.

The interesting thing is that learning the 窶堋ゥ窶堙ア窶堋カ (kanji) actually increases the speed of reading and removes a few obstacles in comprehension. For example, ツ食窶堙冷?堙ゥ becomes "eat"-窶堙冷?堙ゥ to the English reader. This happened to me, and it made oral exams in my Japanese class interesting when I had to stop myself from replacing the Japanese reading of the 窶堋ゥ窶堙ア窶堋カ (kanji) with an English interpretation.

That's the good (and bad) thing about learning the ideograms.

Anyway, learning the ideograms is time-consuming, but in my opinion, no more time-consuming than learning how to read a whole new system with speed and fluency in the first place. As an ESL tutor, I see how much work goes into learning the thousands of English words we have, many of which are import words or are words constructed from Graeco-Latin roots.

Which brings me to:

miwasatoshi said:
I heartily oppose the removal of kanji, simply because the use of syllabaries alone doesn't always adequately express concepts with the same amount of clarity that kanji would (particularly when using Chinese words and homophones).

Chinese words and ideograms are used to construct words exactly like English uses Graeco-Latin terms. Words like "television" or "homophone" all have roots in classical language, so much so that those roots are functionally part of the language, even though the roots themselves rarely occur as solitary words (for example, we wouldn't say "trans" by itself as a verb or adjective).

Anyway, that's another reason that the ideograms are useful. You have a visual pictographic representation not only of the sound, but the idea itself, which is, to mangle Derrida, a more efficient signifier than simply an alphabetic reconstruction of a Graeco-Latin root.

In summation, if the Japanese learning English to any efficiency need to learn these Graeco-Latin roots, just like American schoolchildred used to (remember, our schools are dumber than when I was in grade-school), there is no reason why an American (or other English speaker) shouldn't have to do the same thing through the study of 窶堋ゥ窶堙ア窶堋カ (kanji).
 
Hit the nail on the head there, Leo. As a former English major ("What do you do with a BA in English?" - Avenue Q) I found Latin and Greek roots utterly indispensable -- and certainly they end up useful in numerous European languages (for obvious reasons).

I'm studying Mandarin right now on top of being a Japanese major -- the Mandarin pronunciations of a LOT of words dovetail nicely with onyomi despite the 1300 or so years of drift between the Tang dynasty and today.
 
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