3 ms·

I'm referring to kanji, which is what most words are written with.

• smcl 9y ago
  Kanji you are right, but I’m not sure most words are written with it (happy to be corrected, I only did a tiny bit of Japanese study and was only in Japan for a week or so). Plus it is possible to write a word using either of the other two alphabets even if you don’t know the kanji. Mandarin, Cantonese and likely other Chinese languages are maybe a better example. I don’t think they have a phonetic system that you could fall back on
  • umanwizard 9y ago
    You could in principle write anything you want in any script you want. But if you write a word that is typically written in kanji in hiragana instead, you are not writing according to standard Japanese writing conventions. This is a non sequitur, it is like saying "Chinese writing is not irregular because you could always just write everything in Cyrillic"
    • smcl 9y ago
      Well not really - if a Japanese speaker write a word to another Japanese speaker they could conceivably write the word out through either of these alphabets - they're mutually understood and they are able to perfectly (iirc) represent all of the words used in the language. I don't think anyone would suggest that it's possible to do this with Chinese and Cyrillic characters. I actually think you'd be the first to suggest this is the same thing. I'm really confused why you'd say this.