Should Japan abolish kanji?

[hennaz]

Hi all! You know, I've been thinking... should Japan still be using kanji (Chinese characters), limit their usage, or get rid of them altogether?
The Japanese language may have to continue using kanji, because it's been culturally important to the language, ever since the written language began. Many Japanese words are derived from Chinese, and despite several spelling reforms throughout the ages, kanji continue to be used. Kanji tell readers what words mean, and help people to understand the concept of Sino-Japanese words and sounds and native Japanese ones (on'yomi and kun'yomi). There are many homophones in Japanese, so kanji is needed to distinguish words. For learners of Japanese, learning new kanji can help with learning new words.
In South Korea, Chinese characters are no longer commonly used to write the Korean language (North Korea has banned them altogether). Although the young generation of South Korea are still taught Chinese letters, and that Chinese letters are still used to write formal documents and newspapers in Korean, many Koreans don't know that many, and usually can only spell their names in hangul (Korean letters). If South Korea has used this "middle-road" policy, then there shouldn't be any reason why Japan can't do the same with their language.
However, it may make sense to ban kanji altogether, as they are just so many to learn and remember, and would only make it harder for foreigners to learn Japanese. (With their currently ageing population, Japan need foreign workers, but the foreigners need to be able to speak, read and write in Japanese.) If there are so many homophones in Japanese, and kanji help distinguish similar sounding words, then what about spoken Japanese? Kanji don't come out of peoples' mouths, so you have to know what people are saying. This makes it almost pointless in learning kanji as it only helps you to write and read Japanese, not to speak or listen to it. Even Japanese people can't always read other people's names in kanji, and some names can be spelt using different kanji, so why bother using them instead of kana? If Japanese already has kana, a phonetic alphabet, then why bother having 1000's of kanji to learn?
Anyway, these are some of the reasons for each of the 3 arguments. But I'm interested in hearing YOUR opinions and reasons for them, what do you think?

[godwine]

Originally Posted by hennaz

Hi all! You know, I've been thinking... should Japan still be using kanji (Chinese characters), limit their usage, or get rid of them altogether?
The Japanese language may have to continue using kanji, because it's been culturally important to the language, ever since the written language began. Many Japanese words are derived from Chinese, and despite several spelling reforms throughout the ages, kanji continue to be used. Kanji tell readers what words mean, and help people to understand the concept of Sino-Japanese words and sounds and native Japanese ones (on'yomi and kun'yomi). There are many homophones in Japanese, so kanji is needed to distinguish words. For learners of Japanese, learning new kanji can help with learning new words.
In South Korea, Chinese characters are no longer commonly used to write the Korean language (North Korea has banned them altogether). Although the young generation of South Korea are still taught Chinese letters, and that Chinese letters are still used to write formal documents and newspapers in Korean, many Koreans don't know that many, and usually can only spell their names in hangul (Korean letters). If South Korea has used this "middle-road" policy, then there shouldn't be any reason why Japan can't do the same with their language.
However, it may make sense to ban kanji altogether, as they are just so many to learn and remember, and would only make it harder for foreigners to learn Japanese. (With their currently ageing population, Japan need foreign workers, but the foreigners need to be able to speak, read and write in Japanese.) If there are so many homophones in Japanese, and kanji help distinguish similar sounding words, then what about spoken Japanese? Kanji don't come out of peoples' mouths, so you have to know what people are saying. This makes it almost pointless in learning kanji as it only helps you to write and read Japanese, not to speak or listen to it. Even Japanese people can't always read other people's names in kanji, and some names can be spelt using different kanji, so why bother using them instead of kana? If Japanese already has kana, a phonetic alphabet, then why bother having 1000's of kanji to learn?
Anyway, these are some of the reasons for each of the 3 arguments. But I'm interested in hearing YOUR opinions and reasons for them, what do you think?

I don't agree that Kanji should be banned, thats like saying that they are banning their culture. Why should the country make changes to their culture for foreigners? While it is true that Japan is aging, I don't think the government's stance is to "attract" foreigners, until then, there is no reason to do anything specific to "attract" foreigners.

Just my 2 cents...

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by godwine

I don't agree that Kanji should be banned, thats like saying that they are banning their culture. Why should the country make changes to their culture for foreigners? While it is true that Japan is aging, I don't think the government's stance is to "attract" foreigners, until then, there is no reason to do anything specific to "attract" foreigners.

Just my 2 cents...

To be fair, Japan needs foreign workers to remain successful into the next century. Their population is crashing (I forget the name for this problem--人口問題 or something? maybe 高齢問題?), and they either need foreigners to support the social programs or they need women to start popping out more kids (which means serious social reforms such as cheaper education).

Obviously this comes across a bit harsh, like a foreigner riding in on his black ship to tell the Japanese how to be a better country, but I don't mean it to be that way. I just don't have the patience to deal with your flawed argument right now with the depth it deserves.

The argument is what is best for Japan, not what makes sense based on their current immigration policies. You presume that what Japan is doing currently immigration-wise is the correct policy to follow. I do not think it is. I think many Japanese do not think it is, either. Sociologists in Japan don't think so IIRC.

I had to study this at university in Japan, and I was pretty convinced Japan needs foreign workers.

But I digress.

I've been on both sides of the argument. I'm against kanji simplification, but I'm not native enough to know whether switching to all-kana is feasible. OP makes a compelling argument that it worked for the Koreas, and I don't see why it wouldn't also work for Japan.

Hell, I'd love it if kanji disappeared just because the biggest obstacle to my improved fluency would be gone overnight. Learning vocab in kana is so much easier than learning extra kanji.

Of course, once I hit about 2K kanji, I probably won't care about the difficulty of kanji much anymore.

[clintjm]

Originally Posted by hennaz

Hi all!

Interesting subject. The Vietnamese haven't used it for a good while.
There would really be little gained from not using Kanji anymore. In fact it is integrated so much into written language, I imagine it would actually slow reading and understanding of print. Have a native try reading a Japanese Newspaper article in 100% kana. My guess is it would slow them down a little.

Not to mention how much print space would be lost going to all kana.... I guess they could shrink the kana print some because a lot of print details is not needed with kana versus Kanji where if you shrink it too much, it can not be recognized as easy.

Also Chinese cultural influence was strongly integrated with Japanese generations ago, and still is today; it is hard to pull that out now.

NHK and other do have a special daily news broadcast for the hearing and seeing impaired where they increase the print size on the captions and add furigana because of those that have decreased sight ability. (Great for foreigners too ^_^)

I do know some elderly that occasionally reference / study often used advanced kanji, as their memory fails them sometimes (thus the furigana). I getting a little off topic now.

Anyway, I don't think it will ever happen.

[DanielSheen]

In my experience in learning Japanese Kanji has been helpful to me. I don't know that many kanji, but one thing I did knowtice that was very helpful to me is...魳, 鮃, 鯉 These are examples of kanji, they all are fish. They have a small kanji for fish within them. I know by looking at it that it is a fish. This rule doesn't apply to everything I suppose, but it did help me.

What I find hard with Kanji is that they have different readings. Which can be confuseing with peoples names.

[clintjm]

Originally Posted by DanielSheen

What I find hard with Kanji is that they have different readings. Which can be confuseing with peoples names.

Good point. Names would fully be a problem if Kanji were to dissipate.

[Kai13]

No, of course not. Other than beautiful, its much easier to read a text with kanji rather than one all in hiragana (if you know the kanji).

Kanji makes japanese challenging, by learning it we are improving our brain's memory skills. Also, for me it's easier to learn new vocabulary if the words have kanji. Don't ask me why, it just sticks best.

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by Kai13

No, of course not. Other than beautiful, its much easier to read a text with kanji rather than one all in hiragana (if you know the kanji).

There's the rub, and you can't just wave your hands and make that issue go away. The very crux of the argument is that it is unsustainable to count on labor who can read the kanji. You should address this issue.

I'm just playing Devil's Advocate here.

[Kai13]

You are right . I should have been more specific.

I myself am at a very basic level, and for the level I'm at I know pretty much all the kanji. I wish I had more time to study (I could be so much better... too bad my course doesn't allow me to...)

[RickOShay]

I do not believe the getting rid of Kanji would be a good idea. For many reasons already stated, like visual recognition, ease of separation between words and particles etc.

I believe people who argue for the abolition of Kanji using the "hey look at Korea" argument, may have some flaws in their reasoning.

Now I do not know very much about Korean, so I could be totally wrong here, but my first assumption would be that the abandonment/phasing out of Hanja (Kanji) had less to do with smoothing out education, and more to do with national pride and political issues. Therefore using Korean as a prop for the "make Japanese language education easier" point of view does not necessarily hold much water.

My second argument is that Korean and Japanese are different languages, yes they have their similarities, but just because something might be working out for one, does not mean it will just magically work for the other.

Now I do not know Korean, so I can only argue with what I have observed so far about the language.

Hangul and Kana, are not really comparable as writing systems. Just looking at Hangul you can tell it is more complex and allows for greater distinction in pronunciation and word formation. As this next quote explains:

"The organization of Hangul syllables—with individual phonemes clustered into a syllable, rather than organized in a horizontal line as in English—is thought by some observers to be a powerful reading aid. Because of the clustering of syllables, words are shorter on the page than their linear counterparts would be, and the boundaries between syllables are easily visible (which may aid reading, if segmenting words into syllables is more natural for the reader than dividing them up into phonemes). [25] Because the component parts of the syllable are relatively simple phonemic characters, the number of strokes per character on average is lower than in Chinese characters. Unlike syllabaries, such as Japanese kana, or Chinese logographs, none of which encode the constituent phonemes within a syllable, the graphic complexity of Korean syllabic blocks varies in direct proportion with the phonemic complexity of the syllable. [26] Unlike linear alphabets such as English, the Korean orthography allows the reader to "utilize both the horizontal and vertical visual fields"; [27] finally, since Hangul syllables are represented both as collections of phonemes and as unique-looking graphs, they may allow for both visual and aural retrieval of words from the lexicon." Wapedia - Wiki: Hangul.

In short Hangul is much more effective as a stand alone reading tool than Kana is. Therefore purging Kanji from Japanese would most certainly not enhance its readability based upon these observations.

Last I would like to comment on the "Kanji doesn't fly out your mouth when you talk argument". I do not see how this is really a practical argument. Verbal comprehension and reading comprehension are totally different skills, or were all those language classes we took in school to help us learn to read and enhance our ability just an illusion?? There is a reason formal edjumucation was started.

In addition, spoken and written languages can sometimes be totally different can they not? Japanese constantly omit particles and shorten words when they speak. And lots of times there are many words that are just typically not used in spoken language. So I just don't see how saying that because people can verbally understand each other without Kanji, removing Kanji from the written language would necessarily be a good thing, or acceptable.

I know that many new learners may feel that Kanji is the bane of their existence, but patience and practice will payoff someday, and you will see that Kanji is your friend and probably the greatest tool the language has to offer you in helping to improve your reading comprehension and vocabulary.