Purpose of Kanji?

[mickey4533]

I don't really understand what the purpose of kanji is. Can't we just use hiragana for it? It seems like it's a lot of effort for no real purpose. It seems like it would save so much time to just use hiragana and katana for everything.

What do you think?

[Mr.Styx]

I don't really understand what the purpose of kanji is. Can't we just use hiragana for it? It seems like it's a lot of effort for no real purpose. It seems like it would save so much time to just use hiragana and katana for everything.

What do you think?

 

I bet there are millions of students in Japan who feel similarly, lol. 

The thing is, language is a cultural construct, and thus depends on the context of the current culture and historical traditions.  It is almost impossible to "learn a language" without "learning about the culture".  Though, if you want a language without the chinese characters, look to Korean.  The Korean language has an alphabet called Hangul, where every stroke of every letter is designed to be meaningful (unlike english which has the "double-U" which looks like a "double-V", but sounds like neither!).

[Czarownica]

I think if you look at a very long text in normal Japanese (that is, without any spaces for words, because Japanese doesn't have that) written in hiragana, you'll know the answer. It'll look like a long, frightening mess. Kanji actually makes both reading texts and learning vocabulary easier, once you know at least a few hundred characters.

I wouldn't want Japanese to be a hiragana only language, reading it would be so tiring. And that's taking into consideration that I don't know all that many kanji.

[Miya]

The problem with Japanese is there's a lot of words that are pronounced the same. So if you want to distinguish them, you have to use Kanji.

Lots of people don't like Kanji, but it actually helps a lot with reading (assuming you know Kanji). Believe it or not, it's much harder to read all hiragana.

[gegegeno]

Ever tried reading a passage longer than about a sentence that has no kanji in it? It's awfully difficult to read.

I don't know that you'd call it a "purpose", but almost every kanji has its own meaning. So reading a word in kanji, say even the word 漢字 (kanji) itself can tell you its meaning - in this case it's "China-characters".

This also helps to separate homophones (words that sound the same) since, unlike in English, there aren't two possible "spellings" using hiragana and katakana in most cases. So unlike "there", "their" and "they're" in English, the only way to spell the other words also read "kanji" like 感じ [feeling] or 幹事 [organizer] is かんじ, so unless the context is really clear you can see how even a native speaker might take a while to work out which word its meant to be.

Don't be too discouraged though - kanji can be easy to learn once you get into a rhythm. To put it in perspective, I've learned about 1000 of them in the last year.

[Mr.Styx]

I think if you look at a very long text in normal Japanese (that is, without any spaces for words, because Japanese doesn't have that) written in hiragana, you'll know the answer. It'll look like a long, frightening mess.

Hmm, I actually hadn't thought of that one.  Though, alternatively, they could have invented the "space".  heh :-p

[pandandesign]

I think Kanji is use to substitute some of the characters in which it's written. It helps readers to understand better, so they don't get confused with the characters (in this case, pronunciations).

[Scurventery]

Hmm, I actually hadn't thought of that one.  Though, alternatively, they could have invented the "space".  heh :-p

It's not just about spacing - the hiragana version will simply have more characters than one with kanji. Kana have a more or less 1:1 syllable:character ratio, with some variation. Kanji can often represent two or more syllables each, helping to condense the text.

[gegegeno]

これはひらがなだけでかいたぶんです。

これ　は　ひらがな　と　すぺーす　だけ　で　かいた　ぶん　です。

これは日本語で書いた文です。

There's a bit of a comparison for you guys between hiragana only, hiragana with spaces and kanji+hiragana. The first is a total mess in my opinion. I don't know at first glance if only hiragana is huge, maybe (ひらがなだけでかい、多分）or it's a sentence only written in hiragana. Where do the words start and finish? The second is easy to understand but super long, and homophones are awful (how could you tell if この　たび refers to this time, this trip or these socks?). The last one is harder to read if you don't know many kanji (these are all grade 1 or 2, but imagine they were more complicated), but since it's in kanji it's harder to mix up the meanings.

[13vinylinfants]

The thing is, Japanese didn't just import the writing system from China. They also imported tons of words. Words of Chinese origin are called kango 漢語 and words of native Japanese origin are called wago 和語. Most wago are written with a single kanji, and most kango are written with two or more.

Kanji is insanely helpful when remembering new words. For example, I know the wago "hitori" 独り、which means "one person" (with a nuance of loneliness, isolation, or independence, unlike 一人 which has the same meaning and pronunciation, but just means literally numerically one person). I know that when it's used in kango, it's pronounced as "doku." And I know the wago manabu 学ぶ, to learn, whose kango pronunciation is "gaku." So the first time I heard the word "dokugaku" 独学, I instantly knew what it meant without having to look it up in a dictionary - "self study."

Kanji is a pain in the ass, sure, but once you pick up the common ones, you'll find it makes your language study much easier.

[apexa1]

The thing is, Japanese didn't just import the writing system from China. They also imported tons of words. Words of Chinese origin are called kango 漢語 and words of native Japanese origin are called wago 和語. Most wago are written with a single kanji, and most kango are written with two or more.

Kanji is insanely helpful when remembering new words. For example, I know the wago "hitori" 独り、which means "one person" (with a nuance of loneliness, isolation, or independence, unlike 一人 which has the same meaning and pronunciation, but just means literally numerically one person). I know that when it's used in kango, it's pronounced as "doku." And I know the wago manabu 学ぶ, to learn, whose kango pronunciation is "gaku." So the first time I heard the word "dokugaku" 独学, I instantly knew what it meant without having to look it up in a dictionary - "self study."

Kanji is a pain in the ass, sure, but once you pick up the common ones, you'll find it makes your language study much easier.

This is actually pretty interesting. I had no idea lol. Thanks for sharing 13!