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You have a very good point (so I'm not sure why you were downvoted). I currently read Japanese at an upper-intermediate level. For example, I can read most of
by jdshaffer 3y ago
You have a very good point (so I'm not sure why you were downvoted).
I currently read Japanese at an upper-intermediate level. For example, I can read most of Harry Potter in Japanese an only look up a word every page or two.
The biggest problem with switching Japanese to "all gana" is the homophones. Many similar words sound the same but have different nuanced meanings such as hear and listen -- 聞く and 聴く -- both pronounced "kiku". This happens so often, that I think dropping kanji would be a disaster.
An additional benefit to the kanji is that when you get to know enough of them, you can begin to guess the meaning of new words, similar to learning Latin roots and morphemes like "un-" or "re-".
- geraldwhen 3y agoIndeed the homophones are something! I recently came upon 熱い and 暑い in my learning, and that was a trip. (Both pronounced あつい, both mean hot but with different meaning).
- LittleCloud 3y agoJust wanted to add some color here. The various written forms for native words (和語) like 聞く and 聴く aren't really coming from different words, they were most very likely the same word originally. Only that because Japanese adopted Chinese-character writing, it started developing these stylistic distinctions. Native Japanese people writing these words also don't always distinguish them properly, e.g. using 聞く generally even if the more specialized meaning of 聴く would apply. This particular kind of distinction is called 異字同訓 (の漢字の使い分け) in Japanese. I think a better example is 話す versus 離す which I just discovered yesterday also seem to have the same pitch accent!