/jp/ - Otaku Culture

[Anonymous No.]

Why does Kanji exist?
There is a Hiragana equivalent for every Kanji. Why don't Japanese ditch the Kanji and use instead their Hiragana equivalent?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886028
Use the search engine before making new threads.

[Hype-Moon No.]

Pictograms.

[Anonymous No.]

to confuse foreigners

[Anonymous No.]

because the japanese still haven't invented spaces

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886041
well you don't see me using a dog image instead of the word "dog", do you?

[Anonymous No.]

>implying using hiragana for everything wouldn't result in mass confusion

[shitposter No.]

Why do small leters exist?
we can just write with the caps locks version for the rest of our life.

[Anonymous No.]

Why do different spellings of the same sounding word exist? Plane vs plain, eye vs I, ect.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886052
I'M OK WITH THIS

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886048
Rapidshare does it. They also do it with cats.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886049

>this whole thread is not a troll

[Anonymous No.]

Really, I'm not trolling.

[Anonymous No.]

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/kanji

Skip down and read the "Why kanji?" part.

[Anonymous No.]

*sigh*
The same word written in hiragana can have many meanings. Kanji is used for that reason.

[Anonymous No.]

Ok, So the Japanese language consists of ~50 sounds.

Words usually have 2~5 syllables each, so there aren't enough combinations to go around. Homophones must exist.

Now in spoken language this poses no problem since there are pauses in between words when you speak. However written Japanese doesn't have any spaces.

To solve that problem a long time ago some scholars went to China and brought back a couple thousand of their written characters which are called Kanji to allow written language to be possible.

You might not like it but that's what Japanese is. If you have a problem with the language don't learn it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886097
>But the purpose of this guide is not to debate over the decisions made thousands of years ago but to explain why YOU must learn Kanji in order to learn Japanese.

Well, doesn't answer my question

[Anonymous No.]

Not this shit again. Try actually learning Japanese and then ask this question again.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886122
Actually, yes it does. It doesn't do a very good job of leading off the paragraph but it does address the practicality of Kanji in written language.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886126
I'm trying to, Kanji don't let me.

[Sakura !!mcI4Nfcr3u5 No.]

Text consisting solely of kana is very awful to read, even if there are spaces.

[Anonymous No.]

Disregard stupid questions. Why don't we go with the "OP is a fag" routine?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886135
Kanji got you butthurt?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886113
Those scholars are retarded.
They had two options:
1. Add 2000 bloated symbols to replace words
2. Add a symbol or a lack thereof between words

Why did they chose the first!?

[Anonymous No.]

OP IS A FAG WHO CAN'T LEARN KANJI.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886152
3. Travel to Europe and bring back roman alphabet

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886152
Spaces aren't the only problem. There are still many words with like a dozen different meanings that you have to differentiate between.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886241
Context?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886291
Doesn't always work that easily in text. Plus the Japanese love making kanji puns and such in their written works.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886291
Meguru tabi ni sousoku no kimari ga ikutsu taterareteimasu.
Donna baai de attemo kawari ga amari ni nai.

Why do you think this is better than Kanji? Are you fucking stupid?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886152
This is some of the dumbest shit I've seen today.

They simplified chinese to make it easier for their own people to use. They gave men and women their own fucking system of writing. Hiragana and Katakana were how most peasants wrote. Diplomats not wanting to look like retarded faggots to the rest of the world took the time to write out the characters. Buddist monks taught the children how not to be peasants and have a little fucking pride.

You think making things simple will make things easier? Why don't you go buy yourself some instant dinners or hungry mans.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886334

Hey now, don't be dissin the hungry man

[Anonymous No.]

Imagine it, if the Japanese would adapt romaji into their written language and screw their old writing system.

Now without arguing on how it would be better or worse for the language itself or for Japanese litterature in general, just imagine the Japanese having hundred of thousands free extra study hours they would be able to use to study other things.

That way they don't have to study -how- to read all the way up to college and beyond.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886407
You don't know anything about schooling in Japan, do you?

[Pestilence !!vKqWKxLMglQ No.]

lol i trol u

[Anonymous No.]

I like how no one in this thread is capable of discussing this in a level-headed manner and instead opts for dick-waving about how OP can't learn kanji.

There is no practical reason for the continued existence of Kanji. There were a number of initiatives to simplifiy or discard the Japanese writing system during the 20th century and the only reason all but the most conservative reforms failed was because of nationalism and reactionary flag-waving bullshit. Japs will persist in the most moronic and inefficient behavior to preserve their precious group identitiy and ethnic heritage. Nothing in japenese requires the use of imported Chinese characters and it's widely understood they're an accident of history; the Chinese writing system was the first the ancient Japanese encountered and they poorly adapted to their own language. Visual depctions of ideas are not necessary for speaking or understading the language and were it the case no one in Japan would be able to talk to each other.

It all reduces to a lot of screaming patriotic whining about maintaining "the purity of the culture" against foreign subversion, just like every other xenophobic East Asian country.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886417

[Pestilence !!vKqWKxLMglQ No.]

>>5886417
>There is no practical reason for the continued existence of Kanji.
There is. If you had looked into the matter beforehand you would know, but you haven't so fuck off.

>There were a number of initiatives to simplifiy or discard the Japanese writing system during the 20th century and the only reason all but the most conservative reforms failed was because of nationalism and reactionary flag-waving bullshit.
Kanji are originally from China so nationalism has less to do with it than you think. The fact that they tried to adopt a new system for it but failed in the process should tell you something.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886407
What kind of retarded country do you live in where you don't continue to learn new words throughout high school and college?

>>5886417
I like how you ignore the legitimate posts in this thread explaining why kanji is necessary.

[Anonymous No.]

Try reading a normal text in English, but with no capital letters and no spaces.

[White Ren !YLuFFdRcFQ No.]

>Visual depctions of ideas are not necessary
oh man im getting trolled to the max

[Anonymous No.]

In this thread:

BAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW I'M TOO STUPID TO LEARN A LANGUAGE WHY IS IT SO HARD BAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886113
>Now in spoken language this poses no problem since there are pauses in between words when you speak.

Not necessarily, not in Japanese at least. Japanese is a rhythmic language meaning, not only are there very few pauses in speech, but the phonology of different parts of words actually change depending on what word comes before and after it. Moras are not sound isolates like syllables in english, the way they sound is dependent on the other moras around them, even if those moras are in different words. When you place an arbitrary space in what your saying, the previous and next mora will sound different (which is probably one reason why japanese people dont use spaces between words).

If you listen to japanese people speak there are usually only pauses between postpositions, if ever. You even see this in japanese writing.

私は、ちょっと…

That space is a real pause you would be able to hear if you were listening to the speaker. The sentence, 青い薔薇を買いました would most likely not have a vocal "space" anywhere, unless the speaker forgot for a second what he did with the 青い薔薇...

The reason this isn't a problem in the spoken language is because of context, not because there are spaces between words. The real reason why it becomes a problem in the written language is because Japanese words all look alike. English has enough spelling variety that most words look distinct. Japanese does not. So although hanabi and hibana are spelled differently, when you're trying to speed through text your brain wont see that those two words are different words until you take a second to pause and look at them.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886417
If you don't want to learn the literature then fuck yourself in the ass and take an oral Japanese class instead fucktwit? Are you that stupid?

Do you think they teach how to write English in China? Of course they don't. They teach the kids oral English and they can take literature classes later on in life.

God fucking christ. Why are you trying to run before you can crawl. They don't teach Kanji to children in Japan. They learn it as they get older. They know about 50 characters when they're 8. Why the fuck do you think that it's hard? You're trying to stuff 20 years into 2-3. You're not that smart. And your posts have proven it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886447
>There is. If you had looked into the matter beforehand you would know, but you haven't so fuck off.

Really, if you have no counterpoint, don't even bother responding to it.

>Kanji are originally from China so nationalism has less to do with it than you think. The fact that they tried to adopt a new system for it but failed in the process should tell you something.

When it's rooted in 2000 years of established culture it's part of their national identity, and while the Japanese might harbor some broadly politcal contempt for they're neighbors, they're not deluded to extent they've forgotten they've inherited some of the general Sinitic culture.

They never "tried" to adopt anything, romaaji was briefly proposed and promptly shot down by nationalists at the end of WWII.

>>5886450
>I like how you ignore the legitimate posts in this thread explaining why kanji is necessary.

I've ignored them because they're retarded. LOL HOMONYMS and "Japanese has no spaces!" aren't even vaguely intelligent theories as to why this persists.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886450
>where you don't continue to learn new words throughout high school and college?
There is a difference between learning new words and learning entirly new characters to represent words.

Of course you keep on learning new words, spelling them on the other hand is easy and most of the time the pronunciation is enough for one to know how it's spelled, and if not then it's easy to pronounce how it is spelled.

You can't do that when teaching words spelled with unknown kanji.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886450
>What kind of retarded country do you live in where you don't continue to learn new words throughout high school and college?

Kid finding a new word in English:
"I wonder what does rap-ture mean. Is it even pronounced rap-ture or is it rap-tu-re? I'll just type it in my computer and google it."

Kid finding a new word in Japanese:
"I wonder what this Kanji means and how the fuck I read it. I'll need to ask my teacher or father what it is."

[Pestilence !!vKqWKxLMglQ No.]

>>5886528
>Really, if you have no counterpoint, don't even bother responding to it.
The point is I don't have to since the reasons are in this thread. Any student of Kanji worth their shit would know their stuff so I assume you don't even study kanji because you spout such inane bullfeces.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886522

I can't even tell what you're mad about. All I'm reading is "Japanese is hard and takes a long time for native speakers to learn to read". This is true, and it supplements my point very nicely. Thank you for that.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886334
>Hiragana and Katakana were how most peasants wrote.
This whole thread is stupid, but this is staggeringly retarded. If you don't know shit about a topic, don't post like you're japanese_expert, you'll only look like an enoumous faggot.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886543
Japanese children somehow have no access to computers or google.

[Anonymous No.]

The only real alternative is to import hangul as a drop in replacement for all kanjis in their language. The problem with japanese writing is visual variety -- it has nothing to do with spaces, nor homonyms. Replacing kanjis with hiragana would make the language almost impossible to read, spaces or not, homonyms or not. I could imagine a system that would work though -- keep hiragana, keep katakana, but through out kanjis and replace with hangul (or a similar system). I cant ever see the Japanese doing this though.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886548

I study kanji, and nothing rationalizes its continued existence. I'll just take this as a given from here on, as you clearly have no rebuttal to this apart from posting clumsy insults while demonstrating no knowledge of the subject yourself.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886532
There are plenty of English speaking adults who can't spell for shit. You could even say there are times where English teachers have trouble spelling a word. Does this mean English is crazy hard or something?

[Anonymous No.]

Why do people whine always about the same old shit ?
Kanjis' problem it's not their number nor complexity, you don't read most words as well, your brain automatically guess the word based on lenght, form and style.
The real problem it's the impossibility to "read" them, if I don't recall the word "moron" I can simply spell read it MO RO N and recall it.
Japanese are stuck with only visual memory, we can rely both on visual and auditive memory.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886582
Yeah whoever said that was a blatant idiot. I didn't even bother to respond is how stupid it sounded to me.

It's not like kanjis are hard to learn or anything. The first novel ever written was written by a japanese housewife (hired by some rich person to do house work IIRC) who taught herself how to write in her free time. And this was back before the language was simplified and standardized the way it is today. They didn't even have kana back then, they had a bunch of kanjis with strong phonetic elements with no agreement on which ones to use.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886528
>I've ignored them because they're retarded.
So retarded that your only rebuttal is to ignore them and call them stupid. Okay.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886608
There are hundreds of Japanese nouns that are spelled the same. Common everyday words.

There are dozens of every day verbs that are spelled the same.

There are thousands of words spelled the same with the only thing making them definitive are the Kanji used.

Bear. What's the first thing you think of? Naked? Large animal? Show me?

I'd rather be certain of what someone means than to guess at what they are thinking I should guess what they might be considering. Kanji make things clear. If you don't understand this. Then you're a retard that's never bothered to learn their own language and it's own faults.

Captcha you shombe

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886594
>Implying it's fuck-easy to find such a symbol to copy-paste into the search engine.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886646
>Bear. What's the first thing you think of?
First Sajuuk
Then a Russian on a bear
Then a bear with a rifle shooting a man
... I need some sleep.

[Anonymous No.]

Can we start arguing about Heisig now

[Anonymous No.]

Memorizing kanji is easier than memorizing the arbitrary bullshit spelling in english. We all postin' in a troll thread, and not even a very good one. All OP has done is respond to every point by saying "nuh-uuuuuuuuuuh," like a small child trying to explain why every one else only deserves two cookies at snack time but he should get five.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886657
You make it sound like children can't use dictionaries. You make it sound like you've never used one. You make it sound like you already know the answer. You make it sound like English is any different. You make it sound like there isn't a proper method to find Japanese characters already. You make it sound like you don't know how to find Japanese characters using a dictionary.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886639
> Pluralizing Japanese words.
Oh you.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886646

This was already covered. If homonyms couldn't be disambiguated by any other means than cues from the writing system then spoken Japanese would be useless. Entering ~5000 Chinese into the language as pseudo-ideographs is by far the most idiotic solution to the problem if one were to pretend its absorption into the Japanese language wasn't mostly a produc of happenstance. Homonyms are readily distinguished through context. Spoken japanese admittedly has pitch accent as well, but then again, they could've just represented that in writing.

>If you don't understand this. Then you're a retard that's never bothered to learn their own language and it's own faults.

If you've never second-guessed this, you're a retard. And I'm well aware English orthography is awful and shares a number of comparable problems.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886616
There are plenty of Japanese speaking adults who can't write for shit either.

Then again, English is not necessarily the best representative of the roman alphabet even if it may be the most used.
Either way native English speakers learn to read at an earlier age than native Japanese speakers.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886676
>ninjas
herp derp hay guys I'm just a nigger that uses information from 1980.

[Pestilence !!vKqWKxLMglQ No.]

>>5886608
>I study kanji, and nothing rationalizes its continued existence.
You're one weird guy, I bet you've read nothing in romaji/kana if it makes you say that. Oh, you said nothing rationalizes its continued existence? What about homophones then:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/principal

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/principle

Click the speaker icon to hear how they're pronounced, notice how they sound the same yet they are written differently? Now imagine this with 100 different Japanese words that sound and are written the same in Hiragana/Katakana. I don't know about you, but that would make anyone's life a lot harder if it wasn't for kanji. And then there are homonyms but I won't scratch my head any further to deal with a lousy troll, here's some random guy's explanation if it pleases you more http://www.tofugu.com/2008/05/31/6-reasons-why-kanji-is-necessary/

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886670
How isn't Kanji arbitrary bullshit?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886658
>>5886646
I think of Big Bear.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886646
Actually you should write Ninjatachi not Ninjas

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886646

This was already covered. If homonyms couldn't be disambiguated by any other means than cues from the writing system then spoken Japanese would be useless. Entering ~5000 Chinese hanzi into the language as pseudo-ideographs is by far the most idiotic solution to the problem if one were to pretend its absorption into the Japanese language wasn't mostly a produc of happenstance. Homonyms are readily distinguished through context. Spoken japanese admittedly has pitch accent as well, but then again, they could've just represented that in writing.

>If you don't understand this. Then you're a retard that's never bothered to learn their own language and it's own faults.

If you've never second-guessed this, you're a retard. And I'm well aware English orthography is awful and shares a number of comparable problems.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886447
If you studied Meiji language reforms, you'd realize the opposite is true. Kanji was kept to appease the acculturated aristocratic elite, where a scholar's knowledge of kanji (ridiculous numbers, like 30,000) was considered edification of education level. Several other practical reforms were proposed such as kana with spaces, since normal people could not read kanji anyways, and had to learn kana, which would make kana only very legible. There was even a kana only newpaper for a while. However, during the reforms, it was hard enough to keep the elites appeased during an era of massive turmoil, and kanji was one of the things kept to appease the educated elite at the time, who were very valuable for the modernization of Japan and producing propaganda for the lower classes.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886657
Japanese also have no IME, they have to copy and paste all their symbols from a big list now.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886657
5 seconds in IME pad. You don't know what you're talking about.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886712
You see a kanji in a book. What do you do?

[Pestilence !!vKqWKxLMglQ No.]

>>5886702
Homonyms are MOSTLY no big-deal in speech because it's easier to pick up the context in conversations. Have you ever watched Japanese TV shows? Some of them have subtitles blocking up the whole screen for reason.

[Sakura !!mcI4Nfcr3u5 No.]

>>5886715
Your penmanship is superb.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886732
The common person had next to no knowledge of kanji, besides very simple ones used on signs for various accommodations before the Meiji language reforms. Before then it was only overeducated scholars whose pride and joy was knowing 30,000 useless kanji, just to show how educated they were.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886702
See>>5886482

[Anonymous No.]

OP, you don't even know what hiragana and katakana are do you?

They're simplified chinese characters. You're asking the Japanese to be faggots like the Koreans? Make their own language out of dots and lines?

You're saying nationalism and pride are the problem? I think it's your retardation.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886787

[Anonymous No.]

Why are posts deleted all of a sudden?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886658
If you are referring to the Homeworld series, then sir you have great taste in slightly vintage strategic video games.

Oh, and OP, Kanji do my fuckin' head in but that's life. Boot straps and all that. Deal.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886741
I made it extra beautiful just for /jp/. Normally it's more like this, 斜 is still around the top in suggestions as the stroke order is about correct.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886816
>>5886028
same person. Failed at trolling so trying to same person.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886821
>same person

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886745
This was back when written japanese was almost chinese in nature, even down to the grammar to a large extent. Chinese was used as a form of international communication so knowing 30,000 chinese characters is the equilivent of a non-english speaking person today being proud about how good he is at english.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886754
See>>5886702

Romaaji is no more difficult to sort out than plain kana or kanji while reading. Everything preceeding that point was tangential; spoken Japanese is not at all consitently done with "context" just like written Japanese isn't consistently without it. The divide between spoken and written language is imagined and so are the "problems" people lead themselves into thinking kanji was imported to address.

>>5886787

Why do people keep confusing me with the OP? Yes, Korean does feature a better and thoughtfully-desigined writing system.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886821
You're wrong, but whatever. People whining about things that everyone has to deal with and will never change, ever, just annoys me a little.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886843
Agreed. Korean makes sense to me. Anyone saying otherwise just be trollan.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886835
Not right before Meiji, before then it would be true, but the aristocratic scholars were educated to know pointless things, and as long as they knew more useless things, they were smarter, and the ruling elite went along with the idea that knowledge was power and impressive. Having practical knowledge was for lowly scum.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886857
Did you know that the enzyme in chile peppers, called capsaicin, is a neurotoxin?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886702
>Homonyms are readily distinguished through context

Oh look, it's OP still pretending he knows what he's talking about. It's not uncommon in japanese to have someone ask you what you mean by basic fucking words. When you're speaking, it's easy to explain that "vocal cords" are the things in your throat you use to speak. A book cannot be asked to clarify, so kanji fill that role.

Why are we still feeding this troll? Fuck it, I'm going to go actually learn after this post instead of wasting my time with someone who does not want to learn.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886843
The problem is rooted in psychology. You read words based on their shape and only sound them out if you dont immediately recognize them. Japanese words when written in either latin characters, or kana, all look the same. It is almost impossible to tell one word from the other without inspecting each and every word as you read. It is not impossible, but it is annoying and time consuming.

If you think you look at every character as you read then you're either not consciously aware of it or you read really, really slow because there is a lot of research to indicate that this is exactly what we do when we read.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886874
I do it, it's not that hard. I don't read fuck-slow. It's sort of unfair to just gloss over a word when it takes like 3x as long to actually type it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886787
>dots and lines
Shit, sorry if I am mistaken but aren't those the fundamental elements of any writing system?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886899
don't forget curves!

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886899
Holy shit you're right. Don't forget curves!
and Korean has lots of circles.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886874

You've compelled me to momentarily pull out my Japanese textbook and read the romanization of one of the conversations. The visual form of words is no less distinctive than in English, contrived examples aside. You can't pretend kanji doesn't provide the same degree of trouble with this, either; there're plenty of vaguely distinguished characters.

犬 太 天 夫 夬 夭

[有希・長門~~ヽ（ ＾ω＾）ﾉ ｻｸｾｽ !f/akPANTSU No.]

Stop being so selfish. Kanji works for millions of people for a reason, and you want them to change it for you to make your life easier?

How pathetic.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886909
You can bitch and moan all you want but you'll still be learning those Kanji which are very helpful to you so I don't really know what you're getting at. Why don't you learn japanese with romaji and kana then if kanji are so obsolete?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886868
If the person you are talking to doesn't know what you mean when you say "vocal cords", what makes you think he will know it once he sees it written?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886909
those are pretty easy to tell apart, you should've looked for the really fucking indistinguishable ones

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886921
He knows 100 kanji max, cut him some slack.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886909
English has something like 3,000 distinct sounds. Japanese has an entire order of magnitude less. You can measure this scientifically, I don't need your personal opinion as input.

But yes, there are some kanjis that are hard to tell apart. But when you put them in words it becomes much easier -- in fact your brain probably glosses over the differences without even noticing.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886937
calling bullshit on 3000

and once again you're unnecessarily pluralizing an already plural word.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886921
Roman alphabet works for billions of people. What's your point?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886907
You know, we have a letter shaped like a circle too.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886948
And do they cry for a change? Nope, idiot.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886921

No one is asking them to change. Although, I in particular, am asking the horde of defensive weeaboos in this thread who think Japan can do no wrong to acknowledge that it was never compentently "designed" in any way, and it persisted for largely politcal reasons, and that OP asked a fairly reasonable question.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886954
herp derp.
I wasn't speaking ill of the mighty circles.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886955
Ah, if only Rome didn't win the Punic Wars...
Glorious קַרְתְּ חַדַשְתְּ !

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886909

I was just going by radical search with low stroke count in my dictionary program.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886964
Hey man I'll vouch for you.
I think Japan is a pretty cool guy, but eh has his flaws and is stubborn.
hm.
I should read some Hetalia.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886964
>Japan can do no wrong to acknowledge that it was never compentently "designed" in any way (to support kanji?)
We know this you fucking idiot.

What OP asked was this:

>Why don't Japanese ditch the Kanji and use instead their Hiragana equivalent?
THIS IS SUCH A FUCKING STUPID IDEA AND YOU ARE FUCKING STUPID FOR EVEN MISINTERPRETING IT AND WAVING YOUR SMALL COREAN DIG AROUND.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886964
>Japan can do no wrong to acknowledge that it was never compentently "designed" in any way (to support kanji?)
We know this you fucking idiot.

What OP asked was this:

>Why don't Japanese ditch the Kanji and use instead their Hiragana equivalent?
THIS IS SUCH A FUCKING STUPID IDEA AND YOU ARE FUCKING STUPID FOR EVEN MISINTERPRETING IT AND WAVING YOUR SMALL COREAN DICK AROUND.

[Anonymous No.]

iPhone fag here. Do Japanese often use emoji?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886986

Why are you so angry?

It's not at all an unreasonable idea, and in the early era of computing it was fairly common, and moreover it belies the very clear likelihood that kanji aren't as necessary as they're thought to be by some.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886991
are you an idiot?
removing kanji is like telling america to switch to the metric system.
It just won't fucking work

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887001

Yes, and in both cases, largely for cultural and sociological reasons as I've already covered. I'm pleased to see we agree.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886991
Sorry, my Korean blood got the better of me because my kinsman is such a baka.

>It's not at all an unreasonable idea
Of course not, but to say that 100% Kana are more useful and favorable over Kanji is ridiculous. No one is denying that there could be far better systems for Kanji but why should there be? Kanji are fine when you know about 500, learn to love them.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887001
Americunt here.
My father, my brothers and I easily and gladly use the metric system when the situation calls for it, but we're highly versed in both.
The English customary system is highly convoluted.

and I'm a right-winged southerner. So don't say that I'm just not a typical Americunt.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887012
>Sorry, my Korean blood got the better of me because my kinsman is such a baka.
>this thread

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886946
3,000 is actually very conservative. Some studies place it well above 10,000. By comparison mandarin has 400 or 1200 depending on how you count them. I think japanese has close to 140 distinct sounds after you count long vowels etc.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887021
>right-winged southerner
>/jp/

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886028
why does upper case exist?
there is a lower case equivalent for every letter. why don't british ditch the upper case and use instead their lower case equivalent?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887049
i agree with this. upper case is overrated.
also, germans abuse it

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887049

That's really a fair question as well.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887049
I know several people who OFTEN WILL WRITE LIKE THIS. THEY'RE EXCUSE IS SOME CRAP LIKE "DRAFTING" OR SOMETHING. I DON'T KNOW. OF COURSE THEY DON'T TYPE LIKE THIS BUT YEAH. HANDWRITTEN=ALLCAPS

[Anonymous No.]

>>5886052
>>5886054
Always in these debates we get asinine strawmens that add little or nothing to the argument. Do you even know what the words comparison or analogy means?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887056
capitalize a noun to differentiate it from a verb or pronoun.
Think of it as an honorific specifically given to nouns.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887070
shut the fuck up nigger

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887077
That's your rebuttal? seriously?

[Anonymous No.]

And why would Japanese WANT to throw the kanji away? Japan has one of the highest literacy rates in the world, so everybody can read them anyway. Why would people want to undergo the trouble of getting accustomed to reading in hiragana when they are already used to kanji?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887062
>they're

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887089
i do't neeed one when i see a nigger, gonan grill ya up fine good you fuckinf scum

come to my white community and well see what happens

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887091
I swear, in the context I was writing, I seriously meant to write "they're", as in "they are", and then I backspaced and then I fucked up and didn't pay attention and this sentence is running into a fucking trainwreck run-on sentence and I'm going to stop talking now.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887012
God I hate it when people *write* in all caps. I also put those people's forms on the bottom of the pile where I work.

[Anonymous No.]

You know America has tons of arguments as to why they can't change system and how theirs is superior.

But...

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887090

Japanese count understanding of the kana as literacy. Disregarding that, it's more a testament of their educational system's ability to cram senseless information down their throats than it is to the worth of the writing system itself.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887111
Aforementioned right-winged southerner who likes Japanese culture here. Totally agreeing with you.

[Anonymous No.]

So have we established that the whiner in this thread is some butthurt Gook? It makes sense then.

[Anonymous No.]

You know the thread is shit when it shifts from a language debate to some people throwing out racial slurs.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887132
> Proper usage of the word Gook
I love you

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887114
Actually there's a list of like 2,000 kanji that all Japanese people have to know in order to be considered literate.

Your second point however is extremely correct but I would much rather live in a society that appreciates rational thought than one that doesn't. If you watch enough Japanese media you start to get a sense of just how educated most of the population is. Even your average construction worker understands basic principles of quantum physics and evolution.

[Anonymous No.]

/jp/'s daily "Waaah, waah, I don't wanna learn kanji" thread.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887108

They're just old school. I remember taking a graphic communications class and I seem to remember there was a reason for asking people to fill out forms in "block capitals." Essentially, it forces them to pay the fuck attention to what they are writing (as people usually do not write in all caps) so you don't get a bunch of forms with insufferably shitty and indecipherable handwriting. Useful for info that needs proper copying like names, addresses, etc. but shitty for regular writing.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887173
>2000
Except no one cares about that and most people just keep using a lot more.
Even in light novels they use way over 3000.

There's a trend among writers where they believe that the more retarded exotic kanji you use, the more artsy you are.

[Anonymous No.]

So why did people bring up Hangul?
That would help NOTHING at all. It's also letter-based, they just group 2-3 letters into a single character. It has no advantages over simple romaji or kana writing.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887217
>There's a trend among writers where they believe that the more retarded exotic kanji you use
It's like that in every form of literature. The more pretentious and obscure words you throw in your book the more smarter you look (at least that's the intention). And writers tend to not use the same set of words all the time, it's no different with Japanese authors.

[Anonymous No.]

In order to at least get the main idea of most newspaper articles, you need 3-4k kanji memorized. Realistically, however, more is better.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887173

That might be what's taught in schools, but I don't believe it's the minimum standard they use for rating they're own population's literacty rates, though my source is old.

>>5887176

Why does this keep getting posted here? Is no one capable of reflecting on this without it turning into pissing match?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887247
>Why does this keep getting posted here? Is no one capable of reflecting on this without it turning into pissing match?
Because that's what it essentially boils down to.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887176
Does it matter? Even if they would reform their language, near all written japanese up to date did use it, so learning Kanji will still be necessary if one wants to learn japanese.

That still doesn't mean it's necessary for the language though.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887111
I would agree with this except you seem to ignore simple fact of the matter.

Measuring out 450 grams of flour. 250 grams of water. 150 grams of butter. 400 grams of sugar.

The system isn't practical. Making a cake using kilograms instead of ounces and cups is down right stupid. The majority of nations still use the system for cooking, and the only ones who try to not use it are the anal Europeans. Herp Derp UK IS FUCKING AWESOME LOL.

Why don't we just measure all temperature in Kelvin? Because it's impractical. Fahrenheit is relative to human standards. Celsius is based on scientific standard. It has uses, but so does Kelvin.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887254

It really isn't. I enjoy studying kanji as I find it appeals to my autistic nature, but you'd have be pretty dim to see that it's in many ways not well suited to the Japanese language as has been reflected on here.

Nonetheless, you clearly don't have anything else to contribute here, so run along.

[Anonymous No.]

Japan needs more communist parties. The first thing they do is to start eliminating words. No joke.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887230
Reading some literature can require tons of extra kanji, but virtually every newspaper in the country restricts itself to the jouyou kanji.

[Anonymous No.]

We understand your frustration when facing all that kanji, but please trust those who actually speak the language.

Writing in hiaragana wouldn't work even if you added spaces. Also, kanji actually helps when reading. A fuckton. Once you get to a certain level, you can actually guess words that you don't know pretty accurately from the kanji they use. It also speeds up reading.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887283
>but you'd have be pretty dim to see that it's in many ways not well suited to the Japanese language as has been reflected on here.
I know about 2400 kanji, you're talking to the person who sees more ups than downs in them.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887265
I don't see what's wrong with baking in grams and milliliters. Ounces and pounds have no advantage whatsoever, and until all kitchens come with a standard cup, giving measurements in "cups" is shitty since you have to rewrite parts of a recipe and measure everything up again if you go to a new kitchen. It's like keeping only a copy of the executable code and trashing the source code of a program, you have a load of pointless work to do if your environment ever changes.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887192
Ah, that's nice to know kind anon.

>>5887217
3,500-ish to be exact. ~2000 kanjis will get you reading a newspaper, street signs, people's names etc. I wasn't talking about that specifically just that you do actually have to be familiar with using kanji to be considered literate in japan.

>>5887227
Actually it does. Hangul is the most advanced writing system on the planet. The reason is that it takes full advantage of your entire visual field so you can read more words in a shorter amount of time.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887350
This is seriously irrelevant.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887379
HOLY SHIT I JUST TOOK A LOOK AT HANGUL AND HOW IT WORKS AND THIS IS THE BEST WRITING SYSTEM EVER JESUS CHRIST IT'S LIKE A FUCKING LOSSLESS COMPRESSION I'M GOING TO LEARN THIS THING RIGHT FUCKING NOW. SCREW NIHONGO IT'S A FUCKING PUSSY IN COMPARISON.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887379
>people's names
No. There's an extended list of kanji over the 2000 jouyou just for family names.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887379
>Hangul is the most advanced writing system on the planet.
Really? So every idiot can learn it if they want? Thanks, but I'll stick to my retard-filter called kanji LOOLOL

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887419
Yeah, there are actually two lists. One is like 1900 the other is like 200 and they add up to ~2100 total. AFAIK you need to learn both to be considered literate.

[Anonymous No.]

Why not simply use Hebrew?

There are no spaces and everything including vowels and numbers are implied by context.
When you are good enough at hebrew you can easily glance over small and compact sentences carrying great meaning, quickly understanding everything from context without having to think.

The alphabet and the basics are easy to learn, and the better you become the faster you will read.
So if you are good at it you will be able to read at amazing speeds, otherwise you will still be able to read, only not as fast, but it's still better than not being able to read something at all.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887494
Because jews.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887494
Cause hebrew is fugly to look at.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887494
>Why not simply use Hebrew?
Because they language sounds like someone's coughing up a loogie.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887001
>implying imperial isn't being phased out and metric is being started to be taught at increasingly younger ages in the US

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887507
Only two letters in the alphabet of Hebrew make that sound. It's not nearly as common as Carlos Mencia would have you think.

[Anonymous No.]

Posting runes in a moon runes thread.

[Anonymous No.]

TLDR: Kanji is a shitty system, but its too late to have it replaced.

I'm a newfag to this shit and TBH I dont really know where to start. Kanjis can have like 5+ readings, how the fuck am I supposed to know which one to use? I probably know 50 kanji max, dont flame me, please. I just want to learn this shit, but I dont really know how to go about learning Kanji.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887521
fucking runes, how do they work?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887529
Rote memorization. 2000 years, and that's still the only way. There's lots of ways to get yourself to memorize 'em, but it all boils down to memorization. Better get started.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887529
You basically learn which reading to use for every single word.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887529
Eroge everyday

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887529
tldr: japanese is really hard to read without kanji

Protip: dont memorize all the different pronunciations they'll do you no good. Most of them vary by region anyway so you'll never come across them if you only learn tokyo dialect.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887529
>Kanji is a shitty system, but its too late to have it replaced.
>I'm a newfag to this shit and TBH I dont really know where to start.

Just summarized this thread.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887539
>>5887540
Well heres what. As I see it, I think that not all meanings are used as much as the rest.

Let me rephrase that. You know how there are some words out there would mean X 99% of the time, but 1% of the time they mean Y? Well for all those words, I dont want to focus on learning the Y meanings.

If this is wrong please let me know.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887555
may or may not have been satire.

[Anonymous No.]

I seriously need to stop trying to learn things I don't need to. My major is mathematics, not...foreign language. Fluency might be possible, but I'll be completely illiterate. Screw this. I give up.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887609
>fluency
>illiterate
>thinks it's possible to learn Japanese fluently without learning writing

[Anonymous No.]

How fortuitous, I'm studying Japanese right now. Fall semester starts in a week, balls to the wall time!

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887744
Hope you have a ton of patience. Learning a new language takes a ridiculous amount of time and effort.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887771
Moreso with Japanese.
You could probably learn Spanish, French, and Italian in the amount of time Japanese takes.
BUT DON'T WORRY!
The payoff is great!....possibly.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887792
for weebos, yea the payoff is godly

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887806
other than that, no payoff.
sure you can make some money translating for fucktards who want to play the newest cool VN but can't read moonrunes, but we're talking about a strip of land with an area that's comparable to the east coast states in America.
Unless you're someone wanting to covert the "Eastern Heathens" to whatever your religion is, there's really not much wat do.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887838
There's a lot more demand for Japanese translators than you'd think.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887838

This. It's not like Japan actually produces anything anyone anywhere else in the world would ever want to spend money on at any time.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5887771

I do have a lot of patience. I really enjoy it so it's easy to do. I'm entering level 4, so I'm not a total noob. And all of you who are studying kanji can take comfort in knowing that like most everything else, getting started is the hardest part. I thought it was so hard when I started studying and now it's not so bad. Many kanji are made up of other kanji anyway so there ya go.

[Anonymous No.]

If Japan ever gets firm control of their copyrighted material all interest in learning Japanese will vanish. Japanese media is horrifically overpriced.

[Anonymous No.]

You guys know that English is also a very difficult language to learn right? And yet many people learn it everyday, except for beaners. English has twice as many words as any other language on the planet, the spelling makes no sense, it has idioms out the ass and more audible sounds than the Japanese language. Quit being lazy and study Japanese! If you never give up, you will become fluent.

[Anonymous No.]

You guys know that English is also a very difficult language to learn right? And yet many people learn it everyday, except for beaners. English has twice as many words as any other language on the planet, the spelling makes no sense, it has idioms out the ass and more audible sounds than the Japanese language. Quit being lazy and study Japanese! If you never give up, you will become fluent.

[Anonymous No.]

You guys know that English is also a very difficult language to learn right? And yet many people learn it everyday, except for beaners. English has twice as many words as any other language on the planet, the spelling makes no sense, it has idioms out the ass and more sounds than the Japanese language. Quit being lazy and study Japanese! If you never give up, you will become fluent.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888067
Fucking beaners.

[Anonymous No.]

You guys know that English is also a very difficult language to learn right? And yet many people learn it everyday, except for beaners. English has twice as many words as any other language on the planet, the spelling makes no sense, it has idioms out the ass (try saying "hold your horses" to a foreigner and see what kind of looks you get) and more sounds than the Japanese language. Quit being lazy and study Japanese! If you never give up, you will become fluent.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888076

Yes anon, fucking beaners indeed.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888079
I'M NEVER GONNA GIVE UP

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888052
Won't happen. Japanese porn is the standard across all of Asia. No one else really produces porn, and so everyone just watches Japanese stuff. Additionally, anything and everything is pirated by Chinese and Malaysians, especially because even middle class people there can't buy official stuff (because no one delivers to Malaysia).

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888091

That's the spirit!

Also, any other fags out there enrolled in a Japanese program?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888105
I'm a dual Japanese/linguistics major at UF. I have no idea what I'm doing with my life but I like the classes and I think I'd like to have a professor-type job.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888118

I graduated from the Atlanta Institute of Music and am now at UGA for Japanese, fun isn't it?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888118

If you have enough drive and determination you can make a career for yourself. Enjoying what you do is the most important thing.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888128
The one thing I've noticed about the Japanese department (perhaps it's true of most liberal arts programs) is that it's much more closely knit than say, the engineering or business schools. Most of my friends from high school and a smattering of people on campus are engineering majors, and they don't seem to talk to or know anyone in their classes. They have more friends from taking 1 year of Japanese than 2 years of engineering courses. It's probably not the greatest praise one could have for an educational program, but it is one thing I like about it.

blah blah blah I'm a NEET and I hate going outside

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888145
I don't like anything. Am I fucked?

[Anonymous No.]

Why doesn't everyone just speak English?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888149

Yeah, I like that about it too. Plus my teachers so far have been very attractive and I don't really have yellow fever either.

[Anonymous No.]

When japanese speak, what system are they using?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888170

?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888149
NEET implies not having enrolled. You aren't a NEET.
But yes I hate going outside too.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888167

If we survive long enough, it will defiantly happen. If space exploration advances significantly, English will most likely be the space language of Earth.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888170
Kanji puns are a staple of Japanese humor.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888170
Adults always speak in kanji.
Children still speak in hiragana, so they are harder to understand.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888209

We probably already would be if it weren't for niggers. When I think about what the world would be like without Europe I am just amazed.

[Anonymous No.]

none of you are or will ever be japanese MWAHAHA

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888227
So then why don't they make Kanji the standard, if it matches the spoken language?

[Anonymous No.]

ITT: People who still think that kanji is the hardest part of the language.
Enjoy your 8000+ words that you need to learn unless you want to use a dictionary every 3 minutes.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888234

I laughed...
But I really don't want to be Japanese, I'll just be a giant gaijin and that's okay...

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888242
It IS the standard. You speak in kanji unless you're a ditry foreigner peasant or from Osaka.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888258

What the fuck! The spoken language is just sounds. Kanji and Hiragana don't come into play unless you are writing.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888258
>Implying Osaka isn't a fucking win prefecture

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888281

Oosaka is always a win!

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888279
SHHHH. We were misinforming the less-knowledgeable and gullible people!

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888237
If it weren't for China, Egypt, And the Middle East, Europe wouldn't have shit.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888281
Kantou people still consider Kansai people to be "other."

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888293

Oops, my bad. I fixed it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888299
DAT BE SUM RACISM. DELISHUS AZN RACISM.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888279
When I make the sound "Aaaayyyeee" it has a corresponding letter "A" in our written language.
Why is this not the case for Japan?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888316
When I see the kana あ, it has one unique corresponding sound, ah.
Why is this not the case for Latin letters?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888297

Greeks, Romans, French and British empires for the win! Europe found the world, not the other way around. And without Matthew C. Perry there would be no anime or otaku culture and this board wouldn't even exist, nigger.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888297
>If it weren't for China, Egypt, And the Middle East, Europe wouldn't have shit.
Exactly. Everything that's shit in Europe comes mainly from the niggers and arabs.

[Anonymous No.]

Without Ethiopia, we wouldn't have people.
What now, whitey?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888400

Don't worry anon this nigger basically just said niggers never leave their mama's house =)

[Anonymous No.]

ゆっくりしていってね

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888389
Why ain't they got shit then?

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888400

Without my people you would be in Africa eating feces. Without niggers I would still be here. It's clear who is more influential in the world order. Hell, Chinese hire White people to hang out around their businesses to look more prestigious. No one would ever hire a nigger to do that.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888201
I know it's a bit late but I was being sarcastic, sorry it doesn't translate well.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888428

lol

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888316

Kanji has sounds too, usually made up of several hiragana sounds. Like 宿題 or shukudai or しゅくだい. I don't know if this answers your question, but I tried.

[Anonymous No.]

This is why, dumbass.

[RAWFAG !zOiajmwLVc No.]

homophones and knowing where a word ends and begins.

before I knew kanji I could only read in gana but now that I can read kanji I cannot read in only gana because I do not know which version of the homophone it is and I cannot tell where one word stars and another ends.

[Anonymous No.]

why so much languages in this world? everyone should talk english

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888494
>>5888514

>retards didn't read the thread.

Also,

>gana

[Anonymous No.]

If you dont think kanji are fucking awesome then japanese isn't the language for you.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888561

Awesome and pointless aren't mutually exclusive.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888574
If they're pointless then why dont you try reading/writing japanese without them? I remember watching a jdrama where a girl switches places with her past self, still in elementary school. She started sending texts (メール) using only hiragana and everyone made fun of her cause it took forever to figure out what she meant to say.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888297
See>>5887521
Old Norse folks actually had a very rich culture.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888593
ITT Nihongo is an inefficient language and this is why people kill themselves.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888593

It's been covered in the thread several times already, there are other ways around homophones more sensible than ideographic character imported from China.

No offense to you personally but I can't be bothered to repeat myself anymore.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5888676
I think you missed the majority of this thread where your point was rebutted over and over again.

[Anonymous No.]

>>5889163

I think I missed that part, too.