Why is kanji used in japanese

Ask in our forum. Home Back. Plan a Trip. Some examples:. Anything we can improve? Let us know What can we improve? Nowadays, several may wonder why people still use kanji instead of phonetic writing, such as the Roman alphabet. The answer is because of various cultural and historical factors. Yes and no. The Japanese language is nothing like the Chinese in terms of speech. But its writing system uses the same characters originated in China since it was believed that there was originally no written language in Japan before this time.

Essentially, they are the same characters. But there are some nuances. Since their introduction in Japan, both countries have carried out reforms and simplifications separately and for different reasons. As a result, there are divergences in the meaning or writing of some characters.

There are cases in which common kanji in Japan may be obsolete in China since the latter carried out a deeper reform. Therefore, although the level of intelligibility between both languages indeed remains, in terms of reading, this only means that Chinese people and Japanese people can understand the meaning of a text in broad terms, but not in the same way as each other.

For those beginning their studies, the thought of thousands of kanjis can be overwhelming. As a reference, the official list of regularly used kanji has characters in its last update in On the contrary: reading in Kanji is faster. Because of the high number of homonyms in Japanese, a purely phonetic text would be difficult to understand. Ideogram recognition is immediate due to its visual component. This is a small trap that some may fall into. Sometimes it can work but the meaning is not always obvious.

But generally speaking, Japanese language students can benefit from combining various techniques such as morphological analysis, reading in context, or the use of mnemonics. Technology today also provides multiple additional means for language study. Surprising as it may seem, kanji actually came dangerously close to being uprooted, just like it happened in South Korea or Vietnam.

One of the main problems had to do with the difficulty of making efficient use of printing technology. Telegrams and Morse code were equally problematic because of the number of homonyms in the language.

For this reason, after the end of World War II, the Occupation Government planned a series of measures aimed at language reform, including the elimination of Japanese characters and the implementation of the Roman alphabet.

There are only three Japanese sets of characters kanji, hiragana, and katakana , with romaji being a non-Japanese set of characters that are used by the Japanese. Katakana is useless and very irritating. It screws up the pronunciation very simple words and names. Example: My name is Robert, but when changed into katakana its Roberto, Robert"o"! Where'd the "O" come from? Have you every heard a Japanese person say, "Mc Donald's"?

Its frustrating to the native English persons ear. There used to be a lot more forms of kana other than hiragana and katakana. Those archaic kana are called hentai-kana. Since kana is simplification of kanji and there are many ways to simplify and many kanji from which to simplify, there were numerous hentai-kana to each sound of Japanese. In the last years of the 19th century, Japanese government made a good deal of effort to reduce the number of kana all the way to ONLY two sets.

I do not know if people will further reduce the number. By the way, English also has two sets of letters, the capital and the small letters. Is there any movement to unify the two for simplification? Japanese written language history is interestingly messy, according to history I read, Japanese had a spoken language first before Kanji was imported. You can guess how messy that was, trying to incorporate writings from a totally different language into an established spoken language.

I'm guessing today's written Japanese is the result of years of "incorporation". Interestingly, Korea who used Kanji before, decided to just get rid of it and made their own writing systems. That's not katakana screwing up the language, it's a basic fact of humanity that we can only speak in the phonemes that we know, and without learning the phonemes of another language, we are unable to pronounce, or for that matter even recognize, the sounds of the other language. Should English start using Hiragana to write Japanese words that contain these sounds?

Would that somehow make things better? Nope, because even if English speakers learned what these phonetics represented, unless they focused on learning Japanese, they would not be able to pronounce them the same way Japanese people do. Where did those sounds come from? Japanese had a spoken language first before Kanji was imported.

English is written in Latin alphabets, which exist to record a totally different language from English. Latin alphabets are derived from Phoenician alphabets which existed to record a totally different language from Latin. Koreans got rid of kanji or hanja in s. So it is only one generation ago. We have yet to see the full effects of the loss of Chinese characters to Korean language and society. No one knows if Koreans would have limited vocabulary due to the loss.

CH3CHO's mention of hentaigana is interesting. The different forms of hiragana come from the fact that different kanji were used as the base from which the kana were formed. Scholars reckon that the different choice of kanji indicated some difference in pronunciation that was obvious at the time but later became lost.

Study of the manyogana the style of hiragana used to write the Manyoshu, an ancient collection of poems indicates that at some time around the mid-7th century the Japanese language had at least 8 distinctly different vowel sounds that have over the centuries merged into the 5 we have today. The hentaigana probably reflected in some part the difference in pronunciation that was lost long before the hentaigana were abolished. The interesting difference here is the the Latin alphabet was in Britain before the English language was.

Old English was in fact an inflected language, with a pretty free word order, not all that different from Latin. And the spoken language was still developing while the means to write it down was already there.

So using the Latin alphabet to write Old English was nowhere near as big a jump as trying to write a highly-inflected language like Japanese using the imported writing system of a non-inflected language like Chinese.

Strangerland is also right; it isn't the katakana that 'messes up' people's names, it's the phonemic structure of Japanese that insists that every consonant bar N must be followed by a vowel sound. I assure you the gaijin insistence on putting unnecessary intonation where it isn't needed in Japanese names is just as annoying if you're the kind of person who gets annoyed at people who have accents.

One thing for sure is that they wouldn't be able to read any historical documents with Kanji and more easily be brainwashed false history by their government. It may be the intention of their dropping Kanji.

Of all the reasons I read in defense of katakana, not one seems to suggest the same couldn't be done with hiragana. I think, as is common in Japan, that convention and "but we have always done it that way" trumps any real logic when it comes to writing languages in Japan. Having three different writing systems or four if romaji is included ought to be seen as idiotic from a learning perspective, but is not, because it's been done the same way for ages.

Just because you can remember them, doesn't mean it's a good, or even effective, idea. I honestly never understood why Japanese kana could utilize a new symbol to denote soft or no vowel pronunciation.

We can even stretch sounds by adding a dash mark, so why not a symbol that denotes a soft or abrupt sound. We also have a circular mark to exclusively denote "P" sounds Because you've got it backwards.

Written characters are used to represent the spoken language, they do not dictate it. The Japanese language does not have the phonemes to express the sounds you are discussing, which is why the characters also do not exist.

Think of it for us as splitting up the sound of a random letter in the English language into two parts - it's almost impossible to consider, as those are our phonemes.

Yet another problem I have with the damn katakana is that Japanese over-simplify many words when they "translate" foreign words. Take, for example the English word "steam". I find katakana to be a flawed system, still used because nobody has the guts to question it. It might benefit the lazy mind, "japanizing" everything, but the way the world looks today, I find it better to actually learn about it than pretend everything is easily localized.

When all is said and done, it is "watashi wa kuruma o mita". It is actually the "WA" sound written as "HA" because it's a human language, and it makes no sense Here's an idea for all you gaijin struggling with the reasons for, and uses of, katakana. The sounds are the same, the words are the same but the letters are written differently.

There is a difference between 'China' the country, and 'china' that one uses to eat and drink from. Anyway, my point mainly is if they can turn "ka" plus "yo" into "kyo", why not another symbol to denote "ka" becoming just "k"?

They essentially already do it with kyo. It would not have to be 5 different ones for ka ke ki ko and ku, but rather just one.. Languages evolve over time English used to have a unique character for the Th sound called "thorn" I believe. I mean, we could certainly go into cultural reasons, but dispite the impressive number of characters the available phonics is rather limited in Japanese. In country, this is all good, but it simply causes trouble or frustration.

Alternatively, a more difficult change, but one I would push even harder, is to completely abandon romaji and katakana entirely. No reason why they shouldn't just learn the actual English words in proper spelling. Good example here Not the Kanji, no, because the English characters Kyo should be pronounced as in Japanese. I would absolutely agree that English speakers should be taught correct pronunciation. Same deal with Tsunami.

Americans kind of get away with crappy rr sounds in Spanish, so it is probably a lost cause Whether it's written Reina or Leina, both pronunciations will be incorrect.

So should English speakers learn hiragana to read and write this name, and will that in turn teach them how to pronounce it properly? My point is the cultural superiority that some people here are showing in the criticism of Japanese people speaking their own language, using their own writing system, when we do the exact same thing in English.

It's hypocrisy, and frankly ignorance. Almost all languages have borrowed words from other languages, and pronounce them in the way their own language is used. Ever tried to say 'sake' to someone back home? If you pronounce it the Japanese way, you just look pretentious. That's because we don't say it that way in English, we pronounce it 'saki'. The problem came about because of the use of English lettering - 'sake' looks like the word sake in 'for the sake of So English isn't sufficient to express the proper Japanese pronunciation.

We would need Japanese characters for that. But it's ridiculous to expect that. Same as it's ridiculous to expect Japanese people to stop using katakana, and to suddenly pronounce words the same as the English pronunciation, when they are not English speakers. It is not just Japan, I have travelled the Globe and your de-facto English exists very little outside the business and tourist Industry. Just try to speak to a local in English and most likely he won't understand you unless they learn English as a 2nd language and use it often.

Holiday trips to Spain, Greece, etc we needed to learn the local lingo as few shop-owners could understand or use English. Why do some people think Japan has to alter their language system to pronounce English, or whatever other foreign languages, properly when they, Japanese, don't really feel the urgency of the issue when they're still in Japan?

English spoken countries also import quite a few foreign words and pronounce them as they wish. What if the original language speakers of the loanwords complain about that? OK well that makes it very clear then! What on earth are grammatical particles and modifiers!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Stranger: I can respect that, but it puts Japanese at a disadvantage when they are purposefully taught incorrect pronunciation.

With English it's the same especially when it comes to country names and some said names have even become accepted or at least understood in their home country eg. Turkey or Paris. A minor one, but a common problem in my job.

I teach a lot of individuals who travel abroad for business. My main point is that people all languages, if at all possible, should be taught to at least attempt correct pronunciation of words if they are applicable. Not shoved down their throat, but at the very least be aware that their usage is incorrect outside, but accepted locally. One that pops up is the use of "Renew" or "Reform" for shops instead of "Renovate" or "Remodel" or the food "Hamburg".

Short version: Learn good habits at the get go and it's much easier than having to "unlearn" bad habits later. They aren't purposefully taught the incorrect pronunciation, they are taught the Japanese pronunciation of these words. Words take on a different pronunciation when they are borrowed into other languages.