Should Japan Get Rid of Kanji?
With 3 simpler ways to write Japanese, why continue struggling to learn 2000 kanji?
Beginning Japanese language learners always ask the same question — why doesn’t Japan ditch the kanji (漢字) writing system?
Kanji are the often complex set of characters used for writing Japanese imported from Chinese via Korea in the 5th century together with Buddhism.
Like English, Japanese was originally a spoken-only language. The educated classes of noblemen, scribes, and priests who could read and write did so in Chinese, just as the written language of England for centuries was Latin.
When a written form of the Japanese language was created, it was done so using Chinese characters just as English was eventually transcribed with Latin characters.
However, unlike the Latin alphabet, the Chinese kanji are based on concepts rather than sound, which is both their strength and weakness. Every concept requires a different character: i.e. 8 characters just for direction: north 北, south 南, east 東, west 西, up 上, down下, front 前, and back 後.
The positive: every basic concept is expressed with its own character. Meaning is imparted immediately. No need to translate from phonetic characters to sound to meaning. The bad: it requires a…
