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Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - tetsueda - 2015-10-28
Even if this far fetched reform was done I can guarantee that things would still be published in the old orthography due to market pressure. Also, everyone who's not Vietnamese should be happy that their writing doesn't look like that.
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - vonPeterhof - 2015-10-28
tetsueda Wrote:Even if this far fetched reform was done I can guarantee that things would still be published in the old orthography due to market pressure.Yeah, there's also this. I have a copy of 山の音 entirely in unreformed kana and kanji, even though the book wasn't completed until 1954, well after the reform (unfortunately I don't have it with me right now, so I can't check which year my copy was published in). And Uzbek publishers still use Cyrillic predominately, even though Uzbekistan's education system switched over to the Latin alphabet about ten years ago. Even the Uzbek versions of BBC and RFE/RL produce most of their written content in Cyrillic, even though I doubt that their target audience contains many people who aren't familiar with Latin letters. Things will probably only start to change once the people who were educated in the new system become the clear majority.
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - Zgarbas - 2015-10-28
Because it's not cool, and it also has a social factor as Western things are usually used with katakana to show their 'westernness', much like how many languages take English loan-words these day rather tha create new words. Technology in particular is prone to this, as the words 'computer', 'mouse', 'hard drive', etc. have entered many a languages.
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - Danchan - 2015-10-28
I recently read a really nice book which covered this topic in some depth in one of the chapters 『日本語がほろびるとき』. Japan did come very close to romanization. At one point it came down to a U.S. occupation representative pressing for fudging of the literacy numbers resulting from a nation wide examination, but the Japanese man in charge (who was actually pro romanization) refused on point of principle. It was a best seller a few years back, and recently an extended version came out. I believe there is an English translation called "The Fate of Languages in the Age of English" or something.
I was pro-romanization when I was 22 or so and just starting out, in part because I believed in the theory of written language being a "tool" used in order to express of language. I think that is wrong now, and I'm strongly pro Kanji for this reason as well as for political ones (anti imperialism). If anything we need more of them brought back, so we can see more sensible spelling that doesn't mix up hiragana and kanji in a single word unnecessarily, like 処方箋 instead of 処方せん, and 洪水 instead of こう水. I think this is the direction things are moving in anyway, which is nice. The ability to write Kanji digitally and copy/paste to find dictionary definitions has gone a long way to ameliorating the down sides of the system.
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - patriconia - 2015-10-28
vonPeterhof Wrote:Right now, I'm reading a copy of Manji by Junichiro Tanizaki published in 2010 with many old kanji forms intact. For example, it uses 畫 instead of 画 and 晝 instead of 昼, but on the other hand some characters are simplified - 読む instead of 讀む. In one passage I just read, 予覚 is written 豫覚 with 豫 (traditional form of 予), and 覚 (simplified form of 覺)...wonder what the rhyme and reason is to it, and am curious of what were used in the original manuscript.tetsueda Wrote:Even if this far fetched reform was done I can guarantee that things would still be published in the old orthography due to market pressure.Yeah, there's also this. I have a copy of 山の音 entirely in unreformed kana and kanji, even though the book wasn't completed until 1954, well after the reform (unfortunately I don't have it with me right now, so I can't check which year my copy was published in). And Uzbek publishers still use Cyrillic predominately, even though Uzbekistan's education system switched over to the Latin alphabet about ten years ago. Even the Uzbek versions of BBC and RFE/RL produce most of their written content in Cyrillic, even though I doubt that their target audience contains many people who aren't familiar with Latin letters. Things will probably only start to change once the people who were educated in the new system become the clear majority.
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - tetsueda - 2015-10-28
![[Image: 39efe9.jpg]](http://hiro.asablo.jp/blog/img/2015/05/29/39efe9.jpg)
As you can see, he used 実 and 写, but e.g. not 当, opting for the more cumbersome 當. Nice to see 朦朧 making a appearance.
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - James736 - 2015-10-28
Wow, there's a lot of nonsense being posted here. I mean, I guess when you have a bunch of people who aren't linguists or particularly well-informed or knowledgeable discussing a very complex topic it's not surprising, but come on. "Poorly evolved"?
As for why Japanese uses a lot of loanwoards, most languages do: French speakers use "le weekend" when they have a perfectly cromulent French word that means the same thing, English speakers use the Japanese "tsunami" instead of "seismic sea wave," Greeks call a shop a "magazi," which comes from the French magasin, and Germans call a 携帯電話--notice that this relatively new Japanese word is in kanji, by the way--a "handy," which is English. That's just how languages evolve, and the comparison with the creation of new words in Chinese, which relies entirely on hanzi, really isn't apt here. Finally, in Japanese 便利店 would mean something more like "convenient store," which is a wholly different thing from a "convenience store."
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - tetsueda - 2015-10-28
James736 Wrote:"Poorly evolved"?Yeah, I see no reason to act like 排泄ヶ山の糞王様 that you speak less than a hunter gatherer and instead some broken version of Indo-European.
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - yudantaiteki - 2015-10-28
James736 Wrote:Wow, there's a lot of nonsense being posted here. I mean, I guess when you have a bunch of people who aren't linguists or particularly well-informed or knowledgeable discussing a very complex topic it's not surprising, but come on. "Poorly evolved"?That's one reason why I've lost the inclination to even debate this issue anymore; addressing all the misconceptions would basically involve writing a linguistic textbook on the forum.
I do want to briefly comment on non-linguistic misconception. It is a myth that the idea of abandoning kanji is an attempt by Westerners to impose Western culture on Japan. The idea of abandoning kanji has been floated by Japanese people since at least the 18th century and reached a fever pitch in the early Meiji period. The proponents have always been mostly Japanese people -- it's not a subject that is of much interest to most Westerners, even those who study Japanese. It is true that after WW2 there was some attempt by certain occupation force officials to encourage Japan to switch to romanization. But the reality is far different from the common picture of brutish Western soldiers trying to force Japan to give up kanji.
It's also worth mentioning that none of the writing system changes in Korea, Vietnam, or China were forced on them by Westerners either. Vietnam of course uses roman letters, but this is not due to the script being forced upon them by Westerners.
Quote:Also, everyone who's not Vietnamese should be happy that their writing doesn't look like that.The only thing I don't like about Vietnamese writing is the way that they put a space after each syllable (obviously influenced by Chinese characters). Other than that I think it's a neat system; you get the tone marks on every word, which is a nice plus for foreign learners.
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - john555 - 2015-10-28
Maybe if Japan switched to Romanization they would end up gradually dropping from use a lot of the Sino-Japanese compounds in order to avoid confusion arising from so many homophones.
I wonder how many Sino-Japanese compounds could easily be replaced with existing native Japanese words versus requiring completely new coinages made up of native Japanese words?
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - visualsense - 2015-10-28
Kanji is easier to read in MANY situations.
With katakana in particular is hard to tell apart シ ツ ソ ン
" The idea of abandoning kanji has been floated by Japanese people since at least the 18th century and reached a fever pitch in the early Meiji period "
Huh, dude, that's exactly the period the shogunate fell and the Japanese decided to heavily westernize their society.
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - poblequadrat - 2015-10-28
You could probably abandon kanji for kun-yomi and keep them for on-yomi without much hassle at all. IIRC this is what Koreans used to do before dropping hanja altogether. In fact, this is to some extent the direction Japanese was moving towards until they began to expand the kanji lists, and in everyday usage I think there's a tendency to write many kun-yomi words whose kanji are very common in kana only. Meh, kanji are ok, no kanji would probably be ok too. Personally I prefer kanji because I like them but let the Japanese do whatever they want with their language.
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - yudantaiteki - 2015-10-28
john555 Wrote:Maybe if Japan switched to Romanization they would end up gradually dropping from use a lot of the Sino-Japanese compounds in order to avoid confusion arising from so many homophones.That's a possibility; it probably wouldn't happen that much. People vastly exaggerate the number of homophones that actually cause problems for native speakers -- the way many people learn Japanese gives them the impression that kanji are necessary to deal with them, but native speakers generally don't have that problem.
A bigger problem than homophones are rare, archaic, or other highly technical terms that people sometimes use in writing. Some of these are rare enough that Japanese people will rely on a combination of the kanji and context to figure out the meaning; these kind of words would probably be less common in an entirely phonemic system of writing, as they are in speech. In general a phonemic writing system would encourage writing that is closer to normal speech.
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - vix86 - 2015-10-28
visualsense Wrote:With katakana in particular is hard to tell apart シ ツ ソ ンSomehow I doubt Japanese actually have that much difficultly with this.
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - yogert909 - 2015-10-28
visualsense Wrote:Kanji is easier to read in MANY situations.You are actually saying the same thing as yudantaiteki. The Japanese decided - not some foreigner.
With katakana in particular is hard to tell apart シ ツ ソ ン
" The idea of abandoning kanji has been floated by Japanese people since at least the 18th century and reached a fever pitch in the early Meiji period "
Huh, dude, that's exactly the period the shogunate fell and the Japanese decided to heavily westernize their society.
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - juniperpansy - 2015-10-28
SomeCallMeChris Wrote:I don't see how Japanese is 'poorly evolved',Here is one simple example of language evolution. Lets say 2 languages come together because of war/resources/whatever. The people are forced to communicate with together so their languages mix and form a pidgin. Let's say that there are 2 words for dog from the 2 languages - "bog" and "doganetroho" Guess which one the people are going to choose? When languages come together like this the people choose the more efficient words/grammar. This is how language evolution works.
English shows evidence of this evolution as common words are short and less common words are long. In Japanese word length has no relation to commonly the word is used
Another basic mark of evolution is the concept of a word. Old languages have no spaces between words when written (eg. Japanese, Chinese). This is more natural as it is how we talk. OTOH all newer languages have created spaces in between words as it aids efficiency.
patriconia Wrote:There actually apparently is a fringe position called 国語外国語化論 (argument for making the national language a foreign language). According to the linked Wikipedia page, the Meiji-era statesman Arinori Mori favored establishing English as the national language, and the author Naoya Shiga posited changing the national language to French.Screw English! Its better than Japanese but this is a good opportunity to create a language that is easier to learn and more effective than any other current language. I think Japan should push for something like this - an international second language that could be used to communicate with every other counrty in the world. Japan could adopt this as a their primary language.
If this gets proper support there is no reason why it can't be done
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - Zgarbas - 2015-10-28
English is the most chaotic language possible. It has multiple waves of influence whoch has led to multiple-tiered vocabulary. WaAaay too many words, and a spelling and pronounciation system designed by Satan himself whoch makes it so that no one can get away with speaking it without misspelling and mispronouncing it (not even natives). it just decided to randomly alter its entire vowel system one day. Then it decided to make descriptive rules. Then it decided to just never make any sense... Old english may have had a complicated conjugation system but at least it made sense from almost every other perspective.
The fact that people choose to use English to communicate is proof that the natural tendency towards simplification in language is a myth. Hell is learning English.
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - sholum - 2015-10-28
yudantaiteki Wrote:In general a phonemic writing system would encourage writing that is closer to normal speech.But should it be so? Written language is used to imitate spoken language, but (for English and Japanese at least; don't know any other languages), it's a completely separate system with its own conventions. While, at their core, both serve the same purpose (to convey ideas), writing has evolved to contain much more data and precision in its words than speech. What is the point of removing a component of written language that adds data and precision when the language functions perfectly fine with it?
It'd be like changing written English to have completely uniform spelling conventions based off of modern pronunciation (and I'm not just talking about simplifications like 'colour' to 'color', but spelling 'right' and 'write' the same, and 'their' and 'there'), it'd be usable (and 'easier' to learn), but it'd lose quite a bit of precision that even our current method contains; English had spelling standards implemented right before a major shift in pronunciation (which completely dropped several sounds and decreased the use of others), which is a big reason why there are so many 'extra' letters in so many our words (besides the Normans).
Until foreign or internal influence causes a drastic change in the language, the written system works fine. Frankly, I don't see a need for complete reform when the current system is already adapting itself in unofficial settings, like using new kana combinations to convey sounds that don't exist natively in Japanese or flat out using the English, French, German, or whatever spelling for a word and providing furigana for it (often using the previously mentioned), which is frequently done in manga (and online).
I don't think there's a need for a drastic reform at this time (or in the near future), but I can see the current writing system adapting over the next couple generations as it has been over this last one.
EDIT:
juniperpansy Wrote:Screw English! Its better than Japanese but this is a good opportunity to create a language that is easier to learn and more effective than any other current language.That was attempted already, and it failed miserably; do you know anyone other than a language geek that knows Esperanto? I imagine you'd face similar challenges as well: it's 'ease' is biased towards Latin based languages; being manufactured means that every concept must be accounted for (and simply stealing words from other languages would likely ruin the point of manufacturing one in the first place, since it increases the complexity; again, caused a bias in Esperanto towards Latin based languages); you have to get people to actually adopt it (good luck).
English became the language of the world through the economic influence of the US and Britain (and some 'persuasion' by both). Before that, it was Latin. Between those two, there was no 'language of the (known) world'; it all depends on trade.
While English is hardly the best fit for international use, it's the current economic standard; perhaps it'll be taken over by Mandarin in the next couple decades (maybe sooner), but who knows?
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - ryuudou - 2015-10-29
patriconia Wrote:Because WW2 happened and after the adoption of the touyou kanji list that practice fell out of popularity. During the meiji era almost all new words were put into kanji, but with post-WW2 government restrictions and occupational government anti-kanji propaganda katakana became much more popular.ryuudou Wrote:You could make the same argument for kana. Doesn't change that it's a comparative mess, and that you have to use multiple words and full sentences to get the same flexibility that Japanese gets on a per-word basis due to kanji.What would you say that it says though that a lot of the productive force in creating new Japanese words has moved away from kanji to using loanwords written in kana? For example, the Japanese decided to call a computer "コンピュータ" instead of "電脳", like the Chinese. They call convenience stores "コンビニ" instead of "便利店", once again the Chinese term. It seems like for many earlier inventions, a kanji term was coined, such as 電話 for telephone, or 自動車 for automobile, but increasingly this look like less and less the case. If the economy of meaning per character is such a selling point for kanji, why isn't it being used as much?
That said the trend ever since then has essentially been more kanji. The extended jouyou is way up compared to the original touyou (which was created with the intention lowering the number more), the name kanji list is politically used as a defacto extension of the jouyou, and so on. And of course novels and games and so on never had to follow those lists anyhow.
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - Danchan - 2015-10-29
yudantaiteki Wrote:I do want to briefly comment on non-linguistic misconception. It is a myth that the idea of abandoning kanji is an attempt by Westerners to impose Western culture on Japan. The idea of abandoning kanji has been floated by Japanese people since at least the 18th century and reached a fever pitch in the early Meiji period. The proponents have always been mostly Japanese people -- it's not a subject that is of much interest to most Westerners, even those who study Japanese. It is true that after WW2 there was some attempt by certain occupation force officials to encourage Japan to switch to romanization. But the reality is far different from the common picture of brutish Western soldiers trying to force Japan to give up kanji.I've never heard of the above "common picture" that you speak of to be honest. It seems like a strawman to me. You are certainly right that the strongest proponents of romanization were actually Japanese. As Patriconia pointed out there were also individuals who proposed that Japan get rid of Japanese as a language entirely and have the whole nation start speaking English or French (and they weren't actually all that "fringe"). The suggesting of what to our minds today seem like such insane sounding proposals can't really be made sense of though outside of the context of European expansion and colonialism. That context is the key. Intellectuals at the time who were aware of what was going on in the world and in East Asia were seriously afraid that Japan would be colonized and lose its independence. These were very dark days (the opium wars etc.). Early on when the Meiji government was still getting underway with its modernization process Fukuzawa Yukichi honestly didn't know if Japan would make it. The race was on to do anything and everything possible to industrialize and modernize (read Westernize), and it was only later after victories against Russia etc. that people had the breathing room to start to argue more for protection of what was being lost. Japan saw itself and its culture and language as backwards, illogical, undeveloped etc. through the lens of Europeans and European technological power and scientific knowledge.
Also, it was the GHQ period that the pro romanization group within Mobusho were at their most powerful thanks to active support from the U.S.
(Also, because nobody else has done it... http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/you-dont-have-a-foreign-language-problem-you-have-an-adult-literacy-problem)
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - visualsense - 2015-10-29
Korean is not even easy to learn for monolingual English speakers, pretty much the same level as Japanese.
Killing kanji would make no difference for Japanese learning English as well, Korea ranks about the same as Japan in English learning stats.
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - Stansfield123 - 2015-10-30
patriconia Wrote:There actually apparently is a fringe position called 国語外国語化論 (argument for making the national language a foreign language). According to the linked Wikipedia page, the Meiji-era statesman Arinori Mori favored establishing English as the national language, and the author Naoya Shiga posited changing the national language to French.The best solution would be to name both Japanese and English as official languages, and teach English properly in public school, by giving it the same weight as Japanese, math and science, and expecting fluency by the end of middle school.
This should be done in every country, not just Japan, by the way. The benefits of bilingualism in general are massive for developing children's minds. Add to that that English is one of the most useful skills you can have, and that having an English speaking public administration (not to mention English speaking corporate leaders) is a huge advantage in the global economy, and nations that refuse to teach it seriously are doing a huge disservice to their economies.
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - vix86 - 2015-10-30
Stansfield123 Wrote:The best solution would be to name both Japanese and English as official languages, and teach English properly in public school, by giving it the same weight as Japanese, math and science, and expecting fluency by the end of middle school.Make it the end of high school and the goal is way more realistic. Of course they'll have to incorporate English it into all their classes, not just "English" class, if they want to stand a chance in hell of achieving that goal.
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - Zgarbas - 2015-10-30
Not like language is a huge part of one's identity or anything. All those people from countries where English is an official language and had their education entirely in English are totes happy with it and aren't complexed about the fact that they have trouble in their own language or anything. And they most definitely did not create pidgin languages which means that their English stands out in a way that is perceived as inferior. And there are most definitely no cases of people who are raised in bilingual environments which end up not being fluent in either language, and even if there were, it does not pose a problem in any way.
Kanji Abolitionism (漢字廃止論) - James736 - 2015-10-30
Stansfield123 Wrote:The best solution would be to name both Japanese and English as official languages, and teach English properly in public school, by giving it the same weight as Japanese, math and science, and expecting fluency by the end of middle school.Why not just do away with all other languages! They're a barrier to the global economy!! Nobody really needs to speak Japanese anyway when you can express any idea perfectly well in English!!!
This should be done in every country, not just Japan, by the way. The benefits of bilingualism in general are massive for developing children's minds. Add to that that English is one of the most useful skills you can have, and that having an English speaking public administration (not to mention English speaking corporate leaders) is a huge advantage in the global economy, and nations that refuse to teach it seriously are doing a huge disservice to their economies.