Why Do Japanese Still Use Kanji? Complicated Writing System.
  • il y a 6 ans
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Why Do Japanese Use Kanji? Japanese is known for its complicated writing system, but why do we use kanji? Cant we just use hiragana and katakana? Is it possible to abolish kanji?\r
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- Hiragana and Katakana are phonetic charers.\r
- Kanji (literally meaning Chinese letters) is like a symbol.\r
- Japanese has a lot of homophones and homographs and kanji helps to distinguish them.\r
- We have a set of official kanji on the joyo kanji list.\r
- There has been a number of attempts to abolish kanji in Japanese history.\r
- Once, John Pelzel from the Allied occupation of Japan tried to completely romanise Japanese after WWII.\r
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[Heres a bit of history of people who tried to abolish kanji]\r
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1866 - Hisoka Maejima, a Japanese statesman, was said to send a proposal to the shogun, insisting on abolishing kanji.\r
1872 - Yukichi Fukuzawa, Japans prominent figure featured in the current 10,000 yen bill, wrote about his idea of abolishing kanji.\r
1881 - A group of people started a movement to promote the use of kana letters in place of kanji.\r
1946 - Naoya Shiga, a famous Japanese novelist, suggested that Japan should adopt French as the official language.\r
1946 - The Yomiuri Shimbun, one of the most popular Japanese newspapers, published an editorial arguing that adopting Roman alphabet would be key to democratise the country.