From what I have seen through my learning of the language, the entymology of many Japanese words (especially borrow words) basically comes down to “this is too complicated to write or say in everyday usage, so we’re just gonna cut out 90% of it out.”
The language itself was created by wanting to cut out a lot of characters from Chinese they were using for record keeping before developing their own.
I wonder how the Japanese language would have evolved if they developed their own writing system instead of adopting kanji. Because then all On reading words would go? But so many words use the On reading. Afaik we have no way of knowing what Japanese was like before the adoption of kanji?
The language itself was created by wanting to cut out a lot of characters from Chinese they were using for record keeping before developing their own.
They shouldnt have stopped, keep cutting my guy. Learning the language would be easier without the Kanji. Granted, not by much, but not nothing. And as far as I understand, the native speakers agree. They all mostly dont know all the Kanji in their language.
It’s funny that kanji is simplified from the Chinese; but it’s still fairly “complicated” in the strokes necessary to write each symbol. Katakana and hiragana are way simpler.
In a way, Kanji is more complicated than Chinese, not simpler unfortunately. In chinese languages, each character has one pronunciation, but kanji change pronunciation from word to word.
Mainland Chinese is quicker to write, too, due to simplification of many radicals in modern times.
From what I have seen through my learning of the language, the entymology of many Japanese words (especially borrow words) basically comes down to “this is too complicated to write or say in everyday usage, so we’re just gonna cut out 90% of it out.”
The language itself was created by wanting to cut out a lot of characters from Chinese they were using for record keeping before developing their own.
I wonder how the Japanese language would have evolved if they developed their own writing system instead of adopting kanji. Because then all On reading words would go? But so many words use the On reading. Afaik we have no way of knowing what Japanese was like before the adoption of kanji?
They shouldnt have stopped, keep cutting my guy. Learning the language would be easier without the Kanji. Granted, not by much, but not nothing. And as far as I understand, the native speakers agree. They all mostly dont know all the Kanji in their language.
It’s funny that kanji is simplified from the Chinese; but it’s still fairly “complicated” in the strokes necessary to write each symbol. Katakana and hiragana are way simpler.
In a way, Kanji is more complicated than Chinese, not simpler unfortunately. In chinese languages, each character has one pronunciation, but kanji change pronunciation from word to word.
Mainland Chinese is quicker to write, too, due to simplification of many radicals in modern times.
Before the end of WWII, the typical newspaper was 80% kanji.