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Has Japanese been watered down? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 49 of 53 20 October 2010 at 5:40pm | IP Logged | ||
I don't even know where to start with this post. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| BiaHuda Triglot Groupie Vietnam Joined 5364 days ago 97 posts - 127 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Vietnamese Studies: Cantonese | Message 50 of 53 20 October 2010 at 9:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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If people survive a few more thousand years all of us will be speaking a language that likely bears little resemblance to what we speak today. The bottom line is that language is just how we communicate with each other and get the job done...
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| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6950 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 51 of 53 21 October 2010 at 4:43am | IP Logged | ||
OK, I'll try and tackle this one. The example sentence you gave is a very simple one (kanji-wise) that can probably be written just as quickly in Japanese as in English. (I'd render it as, 「(son's name)へ 今日は電車で会社に行ってくるね。またね」 If kanji takes longer to write than kana, it's probably only by milliseconds because they're so used to writing it and many use some kind of shorthand. The most difficult kanji in your example would probably be 電車 'train', which is one of the first words they learn to write in elementary school. I think 電車 doesn't take that much longer for a native speaker to write than でんしゃ, the kana version. Also, even if writing in kanji is a little bit slower, recognition is probably faster by a similar margin. Any learner of Japanese past the beginner level will tell you that a sentence written in kana takes longer to read than the same sentence written with the usual kanji. So the same sentence, 「(son's name)へ きょうは で しゃで かいしゃに いってくるね。 ま ね Is not so much quicker to write, and might be slightly slower to read. Also, Japanese people go to school from about ages 5-16 (or 18 to finish high school), the same as any Western country, so I'm not sure what you're talking about there. Edited by Lucky Charms on 21 October 2010 at 4:48am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| morganie Newbie United States Joined 5425 days ago 31 posts - 41 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 52 of 53 21 October 2010 at 2:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you really want Japanese to not be so watered down, you should start a movement to get Japan to outlaw kanjis and erase most of its loanwords, both from Chinese and Western languages, from its lexicon.
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| Millinium Newbie United States Joined 5749 days ago 2 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 53 of 53 03 November 2010 at 6:02am | IP Logged | ||
I'm a relative beginner. I used to feel the way you do. I didn't understand why the Japanese were holding on to kanji which seemed so painful to learn. That is, until I actually started to become comfortable reading kanji...I discovered that writing a word out in kana actually takes longer. Once you get used to writing a kanji writing it is pretty fast. Most annoying of all, it's nearly impossible to skim with kana; reading is slow and painful. I can usually just have glance at a kanji once I've learned it and know what it means, but not with kana. With kana I have to closely follow the sentence with my eyes because there are no visual cues. Why would I want to read over a whole line of kana and spaces when I can quickly glance over three kanji that tell me immediately the same information? Kanji is annoying to learn but it has it's benefits when reading, that's probably why it's still around despite attempts to get rid of it. I wonder if the people here who are in favor of abolishing kanji in favor of kana actually have any experience reading kanji in long sentences, or if they are mostly beginners who are afraid of kanji. I think if you get rid of kanji, that kana isn't the way to go, all kana sentences in long texts are really a mess to read. I think if the Japanese decide get rid of Kanji they need to come up with a completely new writing system. Edited by Millinium on 05 November 2010 at 2:44am 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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