Poll: referendum in Japan on ending kanji

[Sumippi]

はははは！！
冗談はやめてよ～釣りですか？

「去年から海外に住み始めました」「去年から貝が胃に 住み始めました」

「ここで履き物を脱いでください」「ここでは着物を脱 いでください」

漢字がないと困っちゃうね！
あのね、文字にすると、「イントネーション」が見えな いでしょう？だから、漢字がないと駄目なのよ。

[masaegu]

Originally Posted by Sumippi

Hahahaha!!!!
No kidding~~lol~~

「去年から海外に住み始めました」「去年から貝が胃に 住み始めました」

「ここで履き物を脱いでください」「ここでは着物を脱 いでください」

漢字がないと困っちゃうね！

Excellent examples!! I laughed out loud at the first pair.

I only wish OP could read them so he would know instantly how horrible and illogical his idea was.

日本語の読み書きができる人なら絶対ＯＰのようなデタ ラメな発言はしないんだよね。もし漢字を使用しない方 が良かったのなら、もう日本は１、０００年前に廃止し てるはずだ。結局は自分が単にまともに日本語を勉強し たくないってだけなんだよ。駄々っ子のスレだよ、これ 。「ダダスレ」だ。

[Darketernal]

Originally Posted by masaegu

Excellent examples!! I laughed out loud at the first pair.

I only wish OP could read them so he would know instantly how horrible and illogical his idea was.

日本語の読み書きができる人なら絶対ＯＰのようなデタ ラメな発言はしないんだよね。もし漢字を使用しない方 が良かったのなら、もう日本は１、０００年前に廃止し てるはずだ。結局は自分が単にまともに日本語を勉強し たくないってだけなんだよ。駄々っ子のスレだよ、これ 。「ダダスレ」だ。

I am more in favor of throwing away kanji because you can ' know ' the above examples from context, in order to distinguish them. Kanji is not necessary.

[Darketernal]

Originally Posted by masaegu

Does the Roman alphabet come from your country? If not, why are you using it?

And you seem to have no idea that a large portion of the words used in English do not even come from English.

Annnd who cares if kanji are difficult for you or your GF? Fact is it works in Japan. It has worked here well over 1,000 years.

Finally, why the heck are you ignoring my remark that Japan has a virtually 100% literacy rate? If you cannot claim the same about your country, maybe it's your language that needs to be simplified, not Japanese.

Its not, but i am not bothered by it. My gf is bothered by Kanji.

Well, if it bothers my GF, question comes on how many more people are bothered by it? Its not like i am AGAINST you or kanji in particular, but there's no reason to hold on to something that is illogical and difficult and which can be replaced by japanese. Fact is that Japanese developed hiragana, and it worked well without Kanji, its only been introduced to not fall behind chinese culture and economy at the time.

That Japan has a 0 or 100% literacy rate, has got not much to do with its illogical basis. And was therefore ignored by me, not for offensive reasons, but i simply could not relate any value on it topic whise. But you might see that differently.

[Sumippi]

Originally Posted by Darketernal

Its not, but i am not bothered by it. My gf is bothered by Kanji.

Well, if it bothers my GF, question comes on how many more people are bothered by it? Its not like i am AGAINST you or kanji in particular, but there's no reason to hold on to something that is illogical and difficult and which can be replaced by japanese. Fact is that Japanese developed hiragana, and it worked well without Kanji, its only been introduced to not fall behind chinese culture and economy at the time.

That Japan has a 0 or 100% literacy rate, has got not much to do with its illogical basis. And was therefore ignored by me, not for offensive reasons, but i simply could not relate any value on it topic whise. But you might see that differently.

Illogical?? How can you say it's illogical when you can't even read it. Difficult?? Isn't it the same thing as you have to learn by heart the spellings of complicated words in your language?

As a native Japanese speaker, I say it'd be sooo inconvenient to have to read and write Japanese without kanji. I can't imagine how irritating it'd be if I had to read a paper/novel or even manga without it. I used to read for my nephew some picture books which were written without any kanji or katakana, everything was in hiragana, and it was sooo hard for me to understand the meaning of each sentence at the very first sight, and therefore I had to read the stories veeery slowly, because you need to understand the meaning of each word before reading it aloud, which takes far more time without kanji. When you're not sure if a word means 'a bridge' or 'chopsticks,' you can't pronounce it correctly.

[tazzy]

No.
1: referendums are stupid
2: kanji are cool
3: kanji are useful. Even in English we don't always stick purely to our alphabet, we have quite a few 'kanji' of our own- $,2,5,%,@,etc...

And I don't find kanji hard at all, that's the easy part of learning Japanese, learning vocabulary is the hard part.

[Nyororin]

Eliminating kanji would be much like eliminating punctuation and "proper" spelling in English.

I have yet to meet anyone Japanese over the age of, say, 10 - or rather the maturity of a ten year old - who has honestly expressed a belief that kanji should be eliminated. And even most lower grade schoolers only feel that way because their kanji homework is a pain.

Seriously, I think that either your "Japanese partner" is trying to humor you by telling you she thinks kanji are hard and a pain because you have trouble with them, is obsessed with English-language-culture to the point of bashing anything Japanese to win culture points... Or really has the mentality of a child.

Or maybe they are "Japanese" but grew up outside Japan where kanji have been a chore and of no use in real day to day life?

It is just so hard for me to understand why someone could think Japanese would be better off without kanji. It really just stuns me that anyone familiar with the language could feel that way.
Reading Japanese without kanji is even worse than English written phonetically and with no punctuation. There is so much that makes it incredibly slow and laborious to read and comprehend. I will second what Sumippi said about reading children's books. It is *hard* to read something aloud and fluidly to a child without going over it ahead of time when it is written all in hiragana. Even when it is something incredibly simple, it takes longer than reading kanji heavy newspaper.

[vikkaboo]

Originally Posted by Chojikun

I wonder how many Japanese would admit -if they weren't so polite- that the American system of measure is also extremely inconvenient; 12 inches = 1 foot; 3 feet = 1 yard; 5280 feet = 1 mile.

I agree with everything you said, and I definitely don't believe in ridding Kanji in the Japanese language. The most important reason (in my opinion) is that it's a part of their culture. Kanji has been used in their written language for thousands of years. It's used on ancient pieces of art and documents. I also agree that it does help simplify their written language, and if it works for them, then hey, that's all that matters.

Regarding what you said about the American metric system: I think it does make sense. Which would be easier to envision? A child that is 3 feet tall, or a child that is 36 inches tall? Or I could say, "My house is 5,280 feet from the school." Wouldn't it be easier to say my house is a mile from school? We need inches to define things that are smaller than a foot (obviously).

Anyways- No, do not remove Kanji from the Japanese language. I enjoy learning it; I actually think its fun. If you have a problem with learning that part of the Japanese language, than maybe the language isn't the right one for you to learn.

[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by vikkaboo

Regarding what you said about the American metric system: I think it does make sense. Which would be easier to envision? A child that is 3 feet tall, or a child that is 36 inches tall? Or I could say, "My house is 5,280 feet from the school." Wouldn't it be easier to say my house is a mile from school? We need inches to define things that are smaller than a foot (obviously).

Err, I think you misunderstood. No one was saying that the concept of inches or miles were illogical. Just that the system itself really seems so to those who use the metric system. The system used in the US is imperial, not metric, by the way.

10mm = 1cm, 100cm = 1m, 1000m = 1km, etc

If you were asked out of the blue how many feet there were in a mile, would you know? If you were asked how many... umm... pints in a gallon, would you be able to answer without intensive thought?

[vikkaboo]

Originally Posted by Nyororin

Err, I think you misunderstood. No one was saying that inches or miles were illogical. Just that it really seems so to those who use the metric system. The system used in the US is imperial, not metric, by the way.

10mm = 1cm, 100cm = 1m, 1000m = 1km, etc

If you were asked out of the blue how many feet there were in a mile, would you know? If you were asked how many... umm... pints in a gallon, would you be able to answer without intensive thought?

Hmm... I suppose you're right, but I actually do know those things. BUT, that's only because I was taught that in elementary when we were studying metric units. We had to learn that material to pass.

I do understand what you're getting at, and I have to say you're right, and the other asker. I misunderstood at first what he was saying.