Should Japan Abolish Kanji?
- Thread starter Silverbackman
- Start date
- 4 Apr 2011
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Kanji should be there!!
The best part about the japanese language is the kanji. The ON yomi, KUN yomi make it a good challege to learn japanese! if kanji is abolished it will become many other simple,plain language and there won't be any kick in learning it! My mother tongue "TAMIL" and Japanese bears many similarities and I am planning to write tamil in chinese script and i need help and support for it!!
The best part about the japanese language is the kanji. The ON yomi, KUN yomi make it a good challege to learn japanese! if kanji is abolished it will become many other simple,plain language and there won't be any kick in learning it! My mother tongue "TAMIL" and Japanese bears many similarities and I am planning to write tamil in chinese script and i need help and support for it!!
- 4 Apr 2011
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The Hiragana and Katakana are derived from Kanji only! They were used by Buddist Monks as aid to read the scared books written in kanji!!
stormchasar
後輩
- 7 Apr 2011
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Kanji is a bit of a "**** you" to language students, but languages are for the speakers, not the students. It works great for them and makes the language more visually and aesthetically appealing, not to mention easy to read. Ever tried reading a text all in hiragana?
Annne
先輩
- 3 May 2011
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I am not a huge fan of Kanji, because they make writing Japanese so much harder. I still have a lot of Kanji to learn, currently I can write about 1000 Kanji. Even though I don't really like them, I think the Kanji are very useful in certain ways. How would a Japanese newspaper or book look like if written in Hiragana only? It would become very heavy and more difficult to read.
mubay
後輩
- 8 Jun 2011
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When i was visiting Kyoto, I got myself lost and asked this old-lady how to get to a temple, she said she was going somewhere near that so she ended up bringing me with her all the way to the entrance of the temple...
Anyway the interesting thing she said was "Kanjis are a way to tell other how you feel" she also told me how young people are starting to forget how to write Kanjis by hand because of the cellphones, and how that made her very sad since she loved to read letters from her family, because she was able to tell how they were just by looking at the writing.
So i voted NO because I like kanji, Studing Kanji requires time and dedication but that also makes it worth a lot for me as a person and for everybody that dedicates time on that.
じゃねー
Anyway the interesting thing she said was "Kanjis are a way to tell other how you feel" she also told me how young people are starting to forget how to write Kanjis by hand because of the cellphones, and how that made her very sad since she loved to read letters from her family, because she was able to tell how they were just by looking at the writing.
So i voted NO because I like kanji, Studing Kanji requires time and dedication but that also makes it worth a lot for me as a person and for everybody that dedicates time on that.
じゃねー
snooze1524
後輩
- 13 Jun 2011
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No, Kanji shouldn't be abolished. Text written only in Hiragana or Katakana takes more time to read. Kanji takes times to learn, but once you know them, you can read very fast, even faster than with an alphabet based language.
They may need to abadon or simplify these kanji that have more than 16 strokes. Those complicated kanji just made me sick
They make you sick as you do not understand them. What I mean is if you do not get your basics sorted, then it will be really a steep climb to learn the complex stuff. If you learn about how kanji are constructed, or what is their origin, it will vastly improve the speed you learn them, as well as extend the time period for which you remember them without reviewing.
Simplifying kanji will make them even more difficult to understand, as you won't be able to deduct their meaning from radicals, and with the Japanese language being based on homophones, simplification would make reading nearly impossible. You still should consider yourself lucky that you are not learning Taiwanese, as they still use the traditional kanji, for instance instead of 学 they use 學, instead of 体 they use 體, etc.
mieko1970
後輩
- 5 Sep 2011
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They may need to abadon or simplify these kanji that have more than 16 strokes. Those complicated kanji just made me sick
If complicated Kanji makes you sick, then learning Japanese/Chinese is definitely not your cup of tea. On the other hand if you plan to keep your reading to like manga and/or novels then the first 1,500 or so kanji should be just fine.. If you tried to read say Nihon Keizai Shinbun with lots of complicated Kanji then you'll be barfing all over the place.
Sorry mate, I wrote that sentence when I started to learn Japanese with hiragana. Now I realized that a full sentence in hiragana is really a pain in my ***
I love Kanji, I can read books and not necessarily know how to read a word, but still understand the meaning because of the kanji - and a lot of Kanji you can get an even deeper understanding of if you learn all the particle bits. I always make up stories to remember them - 待つ ＝ 行く Kind of left side of iku - to go, and the the right half is お寺 So I think, you go to a temple to wait （For a friend etc). Tada - 待つ＝Wait. And that way I can also remember how to write it with no problems.
Chidoriashi
In imagination land
- 2 Feb 2007
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I would just like to reiterate how stupid this whole thread is, Kanji is essential to japanese. If the you think it is too hard you are a lazy ***** and need to give up now. there is just no argument here, japanese is not korean, and you cannot apply the idea that what worked for korean will work for japanese, end of thread!
Aino
先輩
- 15 May 2011
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Despite the utmost effort of ultra-nationalist Koreans to eradicate Chinese cultural influences ~ KOREA couldn't totally eliminate Kanji.There is NOT indigenous word or syllable substitute for 前 meaning [ front ~ before ~ former ~ etc ].I have seen it on N KOREAN news program TV screen and in S KOREAN newspaper.
My friend tole me that Korean is the most difficult language in the world. Korean > Japanese > Chinese
I've been told multiple times that once you've learnt Japanese, korean is quite easy to learn because they have similar sentence structure etc ...
You know how people all learn in different ways - like audible learners who can learn it from having it told to them, touch learners who need to feel things or do them, and visual learners who just need to look at/read something to learn it .... I wonder if people who learn from listening have a harder time learning kanji because kanji are so visual... I learn from seeing/doing things so I think thats why Kanji is so my thing
Aino
先輩
- 15 May 2011
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That's a myth littered on the internet by some dumbass people promote closeness of Japanese & Korean in all imaginable ways.
- 8 Aug 2005
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really? I've studied Japanese and now live in Korea, and the similarities between the grammar and vocabulary of Japanese and Korean are pretty apparent. Also, I remember that when I was studying Japanese, Chinese students would excel in the written language because of their prior knowledge of Chinese characters, and Korean students excelled in listening and speaking because of the similar grammar structures.
Or was I mistaken?
Aino
先輩
- 15 May 2011
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Any loose suggestion of [ quite easy to learn ] is over stretched ~ that's my little dispute.If there is so much sameness in both languages ~ we wouldn't see Koreans pack Japanese Learning classes in Japan & elsewhere and spend as much efforts as Chinese to learn it.I have one close Taiwanese friend who has lived & worked in Japan said to me that it's VERY EASY for Taiwanese speakers to learn speaking Japanese language because pronunciations compatible to Hokkien tongue ( roll eyes ).
- 8 Aug 2005
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calling something an exaggeration and a myth are two different statements. Having studied one does make the other much easier because of their similarities, though the ease of doing anything is subjective.
Japanese pronunciation is simple enough that just about anyone can learn it easily. Taiwanese speakers would be better off bragging about how easy it is to learn Japanese because they have the closest set of traditional Kanji in their written language.
Japanese pronunciation is simple enough that just about anyone can learn it easily. Taiwanese speakers would be better off bragging about how easy it is to learn Japanese because they have the closest set of traditional Kanji in their written language.
