Should Japan abolish kanji?

[RickOShay]

Originally Posted by KyleGoetz

I don't think anyone actually expects Japan to allow so many immigrants to stay and gain permanent resident status. Did you see how they recently paid Japanese citizens of Brazilian birth (IIRC) to move out of the country?

I would expect Japan to allow more laborers into the country on a temporary worker visa basis. There would be no "second generation."

But yes, if there were a second generation, then you are completely correct.

UHHH.. I am gonna assume you meant to quote me on this one. Yes, I do remember Brazilians getting paid to leave, and not come back. Kind of sad in my opinion. But I guess it is true that there are probably many conservative Japanese politicians that feel it is their duty to keep the Japanese race "pure".

It will be interesting to see how Japan chooses to deal with it's population issues over the next few decades. Will progressive thinkers win out completely someday, or will the remnant attitudes passed down from grandfather to grandson from Japan's darker times continue to have their say policy making??

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by RickOShay

UHHH.. I am gonna assume you meant to quote me on this one. Yes, I do remember Brazilians getting paid to leave, and not come back. Kind of sad in my opinion. But I guess it is true that there are probably many conservative Japanese politicians that feel it is their duty to keep the Japanese race "pure".

It will be interesting to see how Japan chooses to deal with it's population issues over the next few decades. Will progressive thinkers win out completely someday, or will the remnant attitudes passed down from grandfather to grandson from Japan's darker times continue to have their say policy making??

My extremely rudimentary knowledge of Japanese politics is that the until-recently ruling party (LDP) had as its base rural farmers and people like that—basically, conservatives—like the Republican party in the US.

When I lived in Japan, one of my professors lectured about it (could have been a leftist prof for all I know) and about how it's cheaper to give bread as part of school lunches, but since the LDP's base includes rice farmers, no one has the political will to dump all over the rice farmers and switch to bread.

Not sure if it's true. I repeat that my knowledge of Japanese politics is rudimentary. I started reading Japanese newspaper articles just to pick some stuff up.

[PockyMePink]

Originally Posted by KyleGoetz

If you think reading English is at all comparable to reading Japanese, you must be a Kanji Master Man.

/isawoman

It's not completely comparable, but from what I know, Kanji tells meaning, and is easier to sight read. Words also tell meaning (at least, in the some cases) and are easier to sight read. Kana is pronounciatinon/sound, and the example I posted are merely the pronounciation/sound of words.

Also, apparently you think it's at least somewhat comparable, since you commented on Nyororin's post, who posted a similar example, and agreed with him/her completely

[jesselt]

Originally Posted by KyleGoetz

You're creating a false dichotomy. I hope by switching out countries and languages you can understand that there is a third type of person you've not accounted for: laborers from poor nations. I've repeatedly said in this thread that my understanding from school is that Japan has a problem with a lack of laborers and population in general to support their economy. So it's not that Japan needs more CEOs. It's that Japan needs more laborers.

Second, no one is suggesting that people will not immigrate because they didn't learn Japanese. I'm suggesting people will not integrate if Japanese literacy is too unattainable.

And I think the difference between Muslims in France versus in the US is a good illustration of how vitally important integration is to social stability.

Again, I'm not telling Japan how to run its economy and immigration affairs. I'm playing Devil's Advocate with the little bit of demography I know.

What? You've basically said yourself that people immigrate to the US for job opportunities without bothering to learn English. That pretty much proves my point that Kanji doesn't stop people from moving to Japan for job opportunities.

Unless your point was that lack of English proficiency stops immigration, but I hope not.

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by jesselt

What? You've basically said yourself that people immigrate to the US for job opportunities without bothering to learn English. That pretty much proves my point that Kanji doesn't stop people from moving to Japan for job opportunities.

Unless your point was that lack of English proficiency stops immigration, but I hope not.

I think you may be reading the word "integrate" as "immigrate," because I used both in the post. My comment is not that immigration will decrease, but that those here will not adequately integrate in order to maintain social stability.

Regardless, every time I post here I feel weirder and weirder since this is so ridiculously off-topic in my opinion. I'm going to stop coming to this thread. Talk amongst yourselves.

[robhol]

This is a quite interesting subject. While I guess kanji are important enough language- and culture-wise to make a complete ban kind of undesirable, you can't really deny that memorizing thousands of them is a huge pain in the ass and a potential deterrent for people who'd like to learn the language.

I think that banning them is way too drastic, though, even if they are quite annoying sometimes. On one hand, that'd make the job of learning Japanese so much easier, but on the other hand it is, for better or for worse, part of the language and to a degree the culture. Limiting the ones in common use (further, i.e.) might not be a bad idea, though.

Or maybe they should just make furigana mandatory.

[COPE2]

if you want to stop immigration then just ban all kana, and go to an all kanji written language, and no simplified characters either, but then you would get a mass immigration from taiwan, and hk.... maybe.

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by COPE2

if you want to stop immigration then just ban all kana, and go to an all kanji written language, and no simplified characters either, but then you would get a mass immigration from taiwan, and hk.... maybe.

A lot of immigrants to the US do not speak English. Your argument does not hold water. People move for money.

[Alexander84]

I agree with robhol that this is a rather interesting subject. But I think it has gotten away from itself a little bit with immigration and political issues becoming a focus. Anyway, I just wanted to make a few observations on the linguistic side which people may find noteworthy.

The tendency for written language (and spoken) is historically towards simplification and communication efficiency. Current Kanji, in fact, already is "simplified Kanji" as are the two kana syllabaries, which were based on the same alphabet concept that moved hierogylphics through to a simplified alphabet. Hangul also was intentionally designed to increase literacy and linguistic fluency of the country, through the use of pronounceable units rather than understandable pictures.

The barriers to using kana exclusively have already been stated: hard to read, homophones, etc. But naturally there are ways that such problems could be tempered (punctuation.) More importantly, ways of handling such things would spontaneously develop, such as strengthening the tonal difference between homophones (like in Chinese) or a wider array of sounds in the Japanese language.

A previous post mentioned that Kanji study is good for your brain, to which I'll add that it probably benefits different regions of your brain than simplified alphabets because the picture-like characters probably stimulate visual sectors in addition to symbolic processing ones. Also, games featuring Kanji seem a bit more fun than English like counterparts. (Ex: draw all the Kanji you can using te-hen in a minute vs. write all the words you can using the latin prefix "contra-" in a minute.) However, such benefits have to be weighed against the negatives of Kanji use, since mentally stimulating things per se are not necessarily useful as societal customs (ex: Rubik's cube).

Obviously, the questions "should Japan do something...?" and "will Japan do something...?" and even "will this happen in Japan...?" are different. Japanese politicians and people probably have a much different idea of "What should Japan do" than I do, so clearly that depends on one's goals. I think most people here are in agreement that Japan will not do something drastic like banning Kanji, especially seeing as how they adore Kanji and seem to hold their language's purported difficulty to foreigners as a source of pride. However, increasing pressures to internationalize, and internal issues will probably force them to make further concessions to simplified writing in the near term.

I apologize for the length of this post.

[komitsuki]

We Koreans do not use Chinese Characters 24/7.... but it's very important to understand Chinese Characters if you are willing to understand harder vocabularies.

No Chinese Characters = Very impossible advance to higher level of Korean