Japanese Language

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ようこそJapaneseLanguageへ！日本語に興味を持てば、どうぞ登録して勉強しましょう！日本語に関係するどのテーマ、質問でも大歓迎します。 This is a community dedicated to the Japanese language. Feel free to come in and ask questions or post your thoughts and opinions about this beautiful language.

Feel free to check out the web archive of r/LearnJapanese's resources if you're looking for more learning material or tools to aid you in your Japanese language journey!

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Remember that you can add furigana to your posts by writing ~{KANJI|FURIGANA}~ like:

~{漢字|かんじ}~ which comes out as:

{漢字|かんじ}

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DigitalAudio@sopuli.xyz

Why doesn’t Japanese just get rid of Kanji? (youtu.be)

submitted 1 year ago by DigitalAudio@sopuli.xyz to c/japaneselanguage@sopuli.xyz

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This video by Kotorabo, one of the best YouTube channels about language and etymologies talks about the question we’ve all wondered at some point: why doesn’t Japanese just get rid of Kanji?

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[–] diamonddozen@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for taking the time to write that, I kind of didnt expect that answer. I also find Kanji useful; as my kanji and vocabulary grows I'm starting to be able to intuit meaning from new jukugo--and maybe half of the time even correctly guess how it's pronounced. After getting even just a little bit of experience with kanji reading in all kana is a painful experience; like the pokemon games for example. Cant tell you how many times I looked up a word in kana only to recognize I already know that word once I see the kanji in the dictionary.

It kind of reminds me of those Japanese on the street "can you write this kanji" interviews. Even though it's hard to remember how to write sometimes, everyone seems to recognize them easily enough.

[–] DigitalAudio@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago

Absolutely. Kanji is extremely convenient. Though I think for intermediate to advanced learners it can actually become a crutch and a disadvantage to rely exclusively on Kanji.

For example, the Pokemon games shouldn't be a painful experience, because recognizing words by their pronunciation is no different from listening to someone talk, so I think struggling with them probably reflects a lower listening skill level compared to a higher reading level.

Ultimately, I don't think Kanji is actually necessary for writing or reading Japanese. You can hear people talk, give lectures, and communicate orally just fine, which is functionally the same as writing and reading only in kana. But once you know how to read Kanji, it's so convenient, there is very little reason to stop using it. In text, it removes any ambiguity from homophones. It also provides a clear visual structure to sentences. It helps save space and make information concise. And so much more. Kanji is awesome!

But yeah, don't let kanji become a crutch where you wouldn't be able to make out words just by their pronunciation, if you aim to be fluent in Japanese.