Tofugu - Latest Comments in 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

Knut Holt — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 08:02:20 -0000

An in Hangul you write the letters partly over each other so you get a picture for each syllable that resembles chinese charcters.

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

tim — Sun, 29 Dec 2013 08:31:01 -0000

I was going to make pretty much the same points. I'd also add for number 2 - yet people can understand each other when they speak which benefits from no kanji differentiation which shows it is not necessary for phonetic writing either.

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

Jota — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 14:49:24 -0000

I think it would be interesting to point out that Korean used to have a spelling much resembling that of modern Japanese. Most words where written in Hanja (~ Kanji) with some Hangeul (a native alphabetic script) doing pretty much the same work Hiragana does now for Japanese. However, over the course of the last century, Hanja were dropped for the most part (I think it was a measure to foster literacy). During the transition, several of the problems pointed out in the post did indeed come up. For instance, removing all the Chinese characters made it nearly impossible to work out where a word finished and where the next one started, since Korean didn't use spaces either. The solution, however, was clear as day: they started using spaces, solving most of those ambiguities. There were also a huge number of homophones which were no longer distinguished in writing. This proved to be really problematic... except it didn't (at least not for the most part). If you are able to tell the actual meaning of a word when you hear it, you should also be able to get it through while reading it.

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

Neha — Wed, 29 May 2013 22:55:55 -0000

Rather than thinking of it as frying your brain cells, try to think of it as exercising your brain. That might make it feel a little bit more productive. Gambattene! :)

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

Sasaki — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 01:16:35 -0000

For example..

ははははをみがく
It's Hiragana only. Can you understand?

母は歯を磨く
I think you can understand this more than first.

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

Julio Rodrigues — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 17:04:23 -0000

Very informative and funny. Thank you for the post!
Visit my blog to share experiences (althought most people here have a waaaaay better japanese then mine) juliomarcos.posterous.com

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

Madara — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 00:00:12 -0000

Or you can just add spaces i get that its a cultural thing though

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

Alexander — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 11:06:31 -0000

漢字が大好きです。

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

rona — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 02:28:04 -0000

Please tell me how to begin learning to understand kanji EASILY because I can only read hiragana. Kanji really makes me dizzy.

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

Francisco Ross — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 09:25:12 -0000

Responding to each point in turn:

1. The author says that, because there are no spaces in Japanese, making the switch to writing in hiragana only would render it unreadable. Apparently, when hypothetically changing the language to remove kanji, it would be an inconceivable stretch of the imagination to add the concept of spaces also.

2. "In English, you just take the context and work with it." And people read English with no trouble. But of course, many English homophones have different spellings precisely so that people can know which sense is intended, such as "to," "too," and "two." In doing so, they achieve the same effect on meaning as kanji while giving the pronunciation cues that kanji lack.

3. Accessibility to foreign people who want to learn your language might just be more beautiful than a secret code - however pretty - that keeps people out. Of course, English is guilty of this too, in that it's nearly impossible to learn to read and write properly even for native speakers, but many other languages spell almost entirely phonetically (e.g. Korean).

4. It is a well-known fact of linguistics that speakers of all languages recognize the vast majority of words by instantly recognizing the shape of the whole word, not by "building it up" from individual letters. Readers of Japanese should have no advantage here; perhaps the author is comparing their reading speed in Japanese to that of a native speaker and finding the difference impressive, but that is not the same as comparing a Japanese speaker reading Japanese to an English speaker reading English.

5. True, but it's a trade-off between space and legibility. Ever tried reading kanji in a small font on a computer screen?

6. Let's change the subject of the article. "Six Reasons Why You Should Hit Yourself In The Head With A Baseball Bat Every Day. Reason number six: It could be worse! You could have to hit yourself in the head with a baseball bat TWICE every day, like they do in China. So, hitting yourself in the head with a baseball bat ONCE isn't so bad, when you think about it."

Non-phonetic writing systems are doomed to be a historical footnote. Let's not keep them on life support any longer, please.

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

Clumsyarashiyama — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 09:12:37 -0000

That's a very close minded way to look at it.
How many?
Nsibidi - Nigerian originall script
Dongba - Chinese minority script
Classical Yi - Chinese minority script
and some more.
moreover the characters help you reading faster, as I read somewhere.
Also they add mnemonics to remembering new words.

Korea does not use hanja anymore, but not so fast, they do use it sometimes, when the meaning is unclear.
Moreover Koreans learn hanja, the more you know the bigger carrier prospects.
My friend told me once that she passed some test saying that one can read 2000 of them.
She did it since she believed it would make it easier to find a job!
Many Korean do find hanja important.
And guess what is the province in China with the lowest literacy?
the one that uses phonetic script!
just because the west of China is poorly developed.
So illiteracy argument is a bullshit.
There are other thing.

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

Alex — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 13:16:06 -0000

You know, one of the things that frustrates me the most is when people say things like that: ditch characters and follow the rest of the world in alphabets. Obviously, if you dont like the language because it does not utilize a writing system youre familiar with, then learn another language that uses a writing system familiar to yours. Why should we try and change someone else's writing system just so it can suit our tastes/abilities/etc?

Truly, just dont complain and buckle up.

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

Aleah — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 13:36:29 -0000

Gah. I Lovee this article. My first year of studying Japanese, i despised Kanji. One time it could be read as Ka and another Uta. I was like, "Dude Duhbuhyou tee aytch" (Wth) When i studied. But now I absolutely DEPEND on it. Reading the Kanji is easier than listening in my case. Which i really should work on. And as you said, Kanji is very beautiful and appealing to my eyes. I love seeing it and feel accomplished when i can correctly carry out writing them.
Kanji makes my Japanese-studying life easier.
Kanji loovee<3

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

koichi — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 02:22:21 -0000

No fair Chinese knowing kanji meanings already! :P

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

Ziyang Flyingpeanuts — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 02:06:00 -0000

As a chinese, kanji really has advantages to me, even if i may not know the (on and kun) readings. such as the sentence 今日、寿司を食べに行きますか, i can approximately guess the meaning of the sentence jus by seeing the chinese characters. 今日 means today, 寿司 means sushi, 食(物) means food, 行 has a few meanings based on the context, but i guessed that it means to do something, or to walk. of cos, its not always the case that i can guess the meaning jus by seeing the chinese characters.. cos the kanji(in japanese context) may have different meaning as that when its in the chinese context...

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

Patrick — Mon, 30 May 2011 08:43:40 -0000

you helped me encourage to learn kanji more efficiently, ^_^ lols thankyou

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

Ma — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 10:11:29 -0000

true!!!! especially about 3,4.

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

Koara — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 17:10:58 -0000

(following (and ending) part of my comment)

... but maybe there is other nice sides in it, i guess it does with mandarin chinese, since I'm studying it a bit from time to time, and the way they make sentences are actually easy, and there are only four tones for mandarin, and it's actually not difficult until you do your best to understand how to pronounce them (the tones, which are actually for the vowels of course, at least, for mandarin chinese, because I still don't know well for viet, that seemed so hard to me, that I preferred skip it lol, but now, I'd like to know, so.. XD).

I also know there is five tones for thai (for the vowels too), but I don't think it's the case for the others asian languages, well, for not each of them at least.

Well, that said, I wish you the best^^! Good luck with your interested languages :D! See ya!

Ps : Btw, here is my site (it's in french btw, but I actually put links in it that are sometimes in english, well, you're welcome anyway^ ^) > http://amitie-n-fun.forumac...

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

Koara — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 20:50:16 -0000

To Fredy ('f course) :

Hello!

- I did handle english in not being in a english speaking country (lool)! (^ ^)

- It's true that it's actually not always easy in the start, for us french speaker (and maybe other speakers - I'm belgian btw, from the french speaking part (near France), we also speak dutch (near Holland) and a bit of german (near Germany), that makes sense lol)

But maybe, the fact that english is one of my favourite language and that it's a language very useful (and that I use) helped a lot too I think.

That said, it's true that phonetic languages can seems easier, but is it really the case? I'm wonder since I think it depends of the person and her tastes? And well, you know it's not like they are perfect languages for all that, I mean, in romance languages (french, italian, spanish, portuguese and romanian), you have very complicated conjugation (at least for some), and well for french, the spelling is surely not as complicated as english, but is not that easy neither.

That said, I think every language has his nice side and less one's, that's the way it is, and after, it's just a matter of taste and predisposition/susceptibility? (sorry my english is imperfect"^^)

But I guess, there are languages that don't seem to be easy at all, as tonal languages yes, like vietnamian (five and six tones (five for the north, and six for the south, or vice versa (I don't remember well) - I wonder which is the official one btw), ..

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

Koara — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 20:40:29 -0000

Hello! I think most of what you said is valuable, even if I think two points don't.

Point 2 : Well, japanese is japanese, a language is a language, someone could even take it badly (sorry, I couldn't express this in another way, i didn't remember some terms (at least, one).

That said, and still for the point 2, that shows well the importance and the benefit/advantage of kanji.

For point 5 :

- I don't agree neither here, since it's just a matter of size that can be modified! (we could even resize the kanji only)

That said, I think that it's as nice to write in japanese that in english (or french), since the speed is the same (because you have to take the time to write the characters well), and since it has the same complexity level. For japanese : you have to know the right kanji to write. For french, english and so : you have to not make spelling mistakes.

So well, I think everyone has his point of view, and that's the way it is. I just think that japanese is nicer and more interesting like that, as I think that korean is definitely more simpler in being only written in hangul, why? Because if you have studied it, you would have notice that korean is more complicated than japanese, because it has three kinds of consonants, and so hangul definitely helps to know how to pronounce every word well. So I think, every country did the best choice anyway, since korean keeps studying hanja in schools anyway.

And of course, I agree with this present article that is well redact and written.

Friendly ~

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

Kevin — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 02:22:04 -0000

作为一个使用汉语的中国人,经由第三方语言去了解日语,以及日语中的汉字.也是一件很有趣的事情.

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

medyumlar — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 06:42:55 -0000

one week I hate kanji, the other week I love kanji... it's a tough relationship!
but it's all very true what's written here though. it's hard work but in the end it's so worth it.

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

Designer handbags — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 02:19:05 -0000

汉字is cool!

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

Philip Seifi — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:47:48 -0000

If you've understood why kanji is necessary, feel free to read my post on why kanji stroke order is none the less important - http://nihongoup.com/blog/h...

Re: 6 Reasons Why Kanji is Necessary

Kyle — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:26:05 -0000

for me kanji is the easiest cause Im half chinese and basically I know chinese correct me if im wrong but kanji is chinese if not chinese its taken from chinese