If you could get rid of Kanji in Japanese, what would you replace it with?
How would your solution work?

Assume that only having hiragana, katakana, and romaji are not an option.

Roman letters. It would work because Japanese can be represented by roman letters.

Binary. It'd give people a writing system that's actually worth complaining about.
Or, even better, the wave pattern of a word in Japanese; that way, you'd get the pitch accent in there too, so no one can complain about there being too many homonyms. No mathematical models allowed (it wouldn't really be a new writing system then), everyone will just have to get really good at squiggling on very long pieces of paper and get used to handling scrolls again.

More kanji.

Kanji are half the fun of learning japanese.

I'd replace it with korean-like characters. Looks like kanji, but its an alphabet. Would also piss off a bunch of Japanese nationalists.

Klingon. It was good enough for Shakespeare it should be good enough for everyone else.

A color-based writing system, to account for the language's endless homonyms.

(2016-03-07, 5:49 pm)Zarxrax Wrote: I'd replace it with korean-like characters. Looks like kanji, but its an alphabet. Would also piss off a bunch of Japanese nationalists.

Better yet, keep the traditional Hangul block arrangement, but instead of one or two strokes, have each letter consist of a 7+ stroke Kanji representing one consonant or vowel.  For even more fun, separate homonyms via alternative versions of the same sound represented by a completely different Kanji.

If the Japanese language couldn't serve its role as the devil's own tongue, then clearly, it needs more help keeping those pesky Westerners away!

(2016-03-07, 7:32 pm)gc_3k Wrote: A color-based writing system, to account for the language's endless homonyms.

How have I never imagined something like this!?
▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉

A mix of Japanese sign language and interpretive dance.

In all honesty though, I like kanji. Half the time when I know know a word in English, I can understand the gist of the equivalent Japanese word just by the kanji. I'd probably need to learn a ton more Latin & Greek root words to even get close to being able to do something like that in English.

(2016-03-07, 4:46 pm)sholum Wrote: Binary. It'd give people a writing system that's actually worth complaining about.
Or, even better, the wave pattern of a word in Japanese; that way, you'd get the pitch accent in there too, so no one can complain about there being too many homonyms. No mathematical models allowed (it wouldn't really be a new writing system then), everyone will just have to get really good at squiggling on very long pieces of paper and get used to handling scrolls again.

Perhaps multiple bases could be used to represent katakana, hiragana and kanji separately. For example, バカ騒ぎ could be:

278 78 AA330116 1910

This thread made my morning

Emoji...it would work by getting rid of everyone who's not a teenage girl. Radical, I know, but it was OPs idea. I'm just following orders.

MORE KANJI! 3000 is not nearly enough to satisfy me

Not more kanji, bad idea. I would keep kanji though.

Give unique hiragana/katakana for the しゅ、しょ type of sounds, because it is annoying to be subconsciously thinking of しゅと as being a longer word than いし.

(2016-03-07, 4:46 pm)sholum Wrote: Binary. It'd give people a writing system that's actually worth complaining about.

Too late, it is already in use. See their 8 bit dot braile standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille_kanji

(2016-03-11, 5:28 pm)ReneSac Wrote:

(2016-03-07, 4:46 pm)sholum Wrote: Binary. It'd give people a writing system that's actually worth complaining about.

Too late, it is already in use. See their 8 bit dot braile standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille_kanji

*grumble* They should use Unicode.

Only thing I can think of is having a simple set of intonation, rhythm, and/or pitch accent markers so it reads more like spoken Japanese, and build that in into a new purely phonetic system similar to hangul.

Changing the writing system, without it being radically simpler, I think would be just a waste.  Radical abrupt change means disconnect from even the recent past of one's culture.  As neat as having different versions of the same phonetic characters might be, all you end up with is something as simple as Chinese hanzi, which is simpler but not by much.

I think Japan will gradually move away from the use of Chinese loanwords towards the adoption of Western/English loans, especially with the new attitudes seen in the younger generations.  If kanji is really that much of a hassle for the Japanese (debateable) there'll probably be motions to phase it out several generations from now.

(2016-03-12, 8:32 pm)plouis Wrote: Only thing I can think of is having a simple set of intonation, rhythm, and/or pitch accent markers so it reads more like spoken Japanese, and build that in into a new purely phonetic system similar to hangul.

https://xkcd.com/1647/

ReneSac Wrote:Too late, it is already in use. See their 8 bit dot braile standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille_kanji

Darn... Well, maybe an 8-way joystick- wait, that's the same thing...
Analog stick input it is, then. Or maybe dozenal.

While we are about it, perhaps we can also think about a replacement for Romaji when writing English. Possibly some system that can actually indicate how words are pronounced so that, for example we could tell how to say "wom" in woman, women, womb and wombat, or "ough" in cough, through, bough and tough.

Something logical like hiragana, maybe.

(2016-03-12, 9:31 pm)sholum Wrote:

(2016-03-12, 8:32 pm)plouis Wrote: Only thing I can think of is having a simple set of intonation, rhythm, and/or pitch accent markers so it reads more like spoken Japanese, and build that in into a new purely phonetic system similar to hangul.

https://xkcd.com/1647/

https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A..._principal

(2016-03-12, 9:53 pm)CureDolly Wrote: While we are about it, perhaps we can also think about a replacement for Romaji when writing English. Possibly some system that can actually indicate how words are pronounced so that, for example we could tell how to say "wom" in woman, women, womb and wombat, or "ough" in cough, through, bough and tough.

Something logical like hiragana, maybe.

And considering English has gained some status as a world language, it's a bit ridiculous the language is such a mess.  The spelling would change between say, American speech and Australian speech, but I'm not sure that outweighs the barrier it presents to ESL learners.

English spelling reflects etymological history. Losing that would be as much of a shame as if Japanese lost Kanji.

Precisely my point.

Actually I am very happy that no one here seems seriously to countenance replacing kanji.

Well the OP wasn't exactly asking for serious proposals...

(Personally I think it would probably be overall better to drop kanji, but there's pretty much no chance of it practically happening so it's not really worth investing much thought into. Similarly with English spelling reform.)

I never thought I'd get to the point where I'd be saying this, but instead of replacing kanji the change I'd make to Japanese if I had to would be reducing the use of kana to only the bare-bones grammar indicators and for "spacing" issues - I hate reading kana-rich paragraphs and wearing my brain out sounding them all out.