6 ms·

I don't think Kanji makes Japanese easier to read. Korean, ditched it, and it's comparatively easier to read.

krispyfi 2y ago
Korean is easier to pronounce, but Japanese is easier to read. Try reading a Japanese children's book that doesn't use kanji. It's excruciating.
- latentsea 2y ago
  That hasn't been my experience of both languages.
- localfirst 2y ago
  Most HN users who are coders should be able to read and write Korean within a few hours... Good luck with any other language. Japanese is tougher since you have to memorize thousands of what are basically hieroglyphics and learn two separate alphabets (one for native Japanese, another for foreign). With Korean you can express many sounds phonetically (with some abstractions for non-korean sounds)
lbotos 2y ago
I don’t speak or read Korean but I am studying Japanese. I think GP was trying to say that kanji helps: たまねぎ玉ねぎいつつ五つ In both of these examples the words are the same. I’m still early enough in my studies that I don’t know the rules of when someone might choose to write one way or the other, but I’ve seen examples of ads that “spell it out” with hiragana. (Which is harder for me to read, which is what GP was trying to convey imo)
- latentsea 2y ago
  I've been fluent in Japanese for over a decade and am about 6 months into studying Korean. I understand the issues of Kanji vs no Kanji well. Korean successful ditched it, isn't painful to read, is far more accessible to read for beginners, and doesn't suffer from an extreme long-tail of ambiguous difficult readings like Japanese does. With Japanese no matter how many vocab you learn, you hit new words like 仲人, think you know how to read it correctly, can never quite be sure, look it up every time as a consequence and are surprised often enough at the reading that you never really settle into a sense of confidently being able to read new words correctly. It sucks. In contrast I was able to score 50% on the reading section of TOPIK II after only 4 months of study. So, on balance I'd say reading Korean is way easier because they ditched Kanji.
  - lbotos 2y ago
    Thanks for clarifying. I don't disagree that Korean does seem easier, but I still think you are slightly confusing what the GP is trying to say. I've never seen "仲人" before but I'm pretty sure it's some kind of person. https://jisho.org/search/%E4%BB%B2%E4%BA%BA https://jisho.org/search/%E4%BB%B2%E4%BA%BA 仲 go-between (which I never saw before but I knew the radicals as "person middle" but didn't know what they were combined, but this one made great logical sense) 人 person So while I can't "read" it (in Japanese) I can know what it means pretty confidently as kanji very regularly mean the same thing in compound words. If I saw "なこうど" I'd have no idea because those hiragana don't mean anything to me until I learn the meaning. Am I making sense? Like the first time I saw 花火 I knew "flower fire" and was able to guess firework. same with 大人 being adult. I'm not saying you are wrong that Korean is easier -- I'm saying, learning kanji can make it easier to understand a lot of meaning with never actually being able to "read" the words. and the reading is absolutely hard because of kunyomi and onyomi etc etc.
    - latentsea 2y ago
      Being able to guess the meaning of new words was neat earlier on in the Japanese journey, but in the end the problem of "gah but the how hell do you actually read this?" was a greater detriment than that was a benefit. In contrast if I saw なこうど I could at least be perfectly confident I was reading it correctly even if I didn't know what it meant. Sometimes I may be able to guess from the context at least partially what it means, but if not, then I could simply opt to move on having collected an instance of seeing the word. I might then later hear it elsewhere, or perhaps see it again and if I encounter it enough times I can get curious and look it up. I could do the same thing with Kanji except I'd have to look it up anyway to be confident I was reading it correctly. Else I just don't know what the word is, so its harder to mentally file it anywhere in my brain. I found this lead to a very long-tail of pain when reading Japanese that didn't abate even when I got up to around 17k vocab in Anki after which I just said bugger it. So, on balance I prefer the set of problems that no Kanji poses over the set of problems that Kanji poses.
      - vunderba 2y ago
fenomas 2y ago
Not for beginners. But for fluent speakers, kanji are very necessary to distinguish all the homophones. E.g. 効果, 硬化, 降下.. are hard to learn, but they're clear. こうか is much easier to learn, but it could mean any of 10-15 unrelated things.
- latentsea 2y ago
  All of which native speakers have no trouble distinguishing between in conversation when there are no Kanji anywhere. It's the same with homophones in any language, usually the context makes it clear because the alternatives don't fit. The homophones in Japanese and Korean pretty much all come from the vocabulary they share with Chinese which makes up the bulk of the vocabulary for both those languages. One doesn't use Kanji anymore, and no one seems to struggle to read it? Japanese on the other hand I have seen even natives struggle to read. Heck even the existence of furigana in novels is an admission of this.
  - EE84M3i 2y ago
    Written kana drops intonation information that's present in speech. Writing with kanji makes up for this, and also allows for more complex sentences that aren't as common in spoken Japanese. I personally find the most difficult part of reading kana-only text to be detecting word boundaries. It's much easier when kanji is used, and I'm not even a native speaker. An English analogy isthatyoucouldwritewithoutspacesandbeunderstood but it's more difficult to read and unnatural. Young gen-z types on Japanese Twitter abbreviate everything, but even they don't drop kanji.
    - pezezin 2y ago
      That is what whitespaces are for, which Korean also uses.
    - latentsea 2y ago
      Adding whitespace is a pretty simple solution. Heck if you really, really absolutely needed to resolve tonal ambiguity in kana you could add something to Kana to do that. That'd enhance the readability even further since, it's basically impossible for foreigners to learn correct intonation in Japanese unless they explicitly study it and that's on top of memorizing all that Kanji, but it would become explicit. I can recall exactly once in the last 10 years having a conversation where the there was ambiguity between two homonyms and someone asked a clarifying question to resolve it. The vast majority of the time it's just clear from context. So.. I would say even that ambiguity isn't something people would actually have much a problem with.
GreyMolecules 2y ago
Without Kanji, it severely degrades readability. One has to reconstruct the word from syllables, which introduces another layer of cognitive load. In Korean, it works similarly as well though, most people nowadays are quite used to not incorporating Hanja in sentences over multiple decades, to the point where it would be impractical to mingle Hanja in Korean.
- latentsea 2y ago
  Yes, so basically the arguments around lack of Kanji leading to worse readability are actually hitting upon the fact that readability suffers short-term not because Kanji enhances readability,but because they're simply not used to processing the language only through kana, and that were they to acclimatize to that, it becomes readable again and in fact easier to read than before.
  - pcwalton 2y ago
    I do wonder whether kana might be slightly easier to read if ん were written as part of the preceding syllable like it is in hangul.
    - latentsea 2y ago
      Kana would be slightly easier to read if we spent as much time reading in Kana as we have in Kanji. Hangul has some funny rules around patchim that need to be memorized. Kana does a great job avoiding this, so on balance kana is probably just fine compared to Hangul.
      - mmis1000 2y ago
        I don't think so. Kana just don't have enough entropy compares to Kanji. A kanji can be compose with up to twenty strokes with high variety of stroke patterns. Those excessive complexity make it identifiable even in extreme situations. (Blurry or tainted or whatever situation). In some case, a kanji with half of its size masked still be decoded without any ambiguity. But this will never work with an voice based language.
zzo38computer 2y ago
I think kanji can make more clear the meaning if it can be understood, but not for pronouncing. Kana is other way around. (In case it is difficult, it is also possible to add furigana.) I think it is beneficial to have both in Japanese writing.
Ferret7446 2y ago
As someone who isn't even fluent in Japanese, I find it easier to read text with Kanji (in contexts where I am relatively fluent) than without. Japanese without Kanji is like English (or any Latin alphabet language) without punctuation or spaces or capitalization. And also if English had a ton more homophones. You basically need to word-split and disambiguate as part of the reading processing; it's painful.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- latentsea 2y ago
  This is because this is how you've trained your brain to process Japanese. Korean includes white space for this reason, and since everyone gets used to reading it with no Hanja, they don't find it awkward. So, it's perfectly possible to ditch Kanji and add spaces and have a way more accessible language.
  - Ferret7446 2y ago
    That doesn't solve the homophone issue though.
    - localfirst 2y ago
      usually a parenthesis with corresponding character is used to be explicit or to avoid confusion but its strictly for chinese loan words like: ex) 시간 (時間) compared to furigana (note that its not even possible to display the phonetic hiragana): 第二巻 younger generation are no longer learning Chinese so more English/European loan words are directly used which ironically fixes the issue. it is impossible to converse in Korean without using English/European loan words ex) 아이러니 (irony) This allows new ideas/concepts to quickly disseminate in the collective Korean psyche. Constantly new words are being invented, slangs used by primary/middle school are unknowable. Abbreviation/concat combos to create totally new words: ex) 씹상타치 (way **ing above average) also written as ㅆㅅㅌㅊ (wfaa) literally means
- Dwedit 2y ago

Korean is easier to pronounce, but Japanese is easier to read. Try reading a Japanese children's book that doesn't use kanji. It's excruciating.

latentsea 2y ago
That hasn't been my experience of both languages.
localfirst 2y ago
Most HN users who are coders should be able to read and write Korean within a few hours... Good luck with any other language. Japanese is tougher since you have to memorize thousands of what are basically hieroglyphics and learn two separate alphabets (one for native Japanese, another for foreign). With Korean you can express many sounds phonetically (with some abstractions for non-korean sounds)

lbotos 2y ago

I don’t speak or read Korean but I am studying Japanese. I think GP was trying to say that kanji helps: たまねぎ玉ねぎいつつ五つ In both of these examples the words are the same. I’m still early enough in my studies that I don’t know the rules of when someone might choose to write one way or the other, but I’ve seen examples of ads that “spell it out” with hiragana. (Which is harder for me to read, which is what GP was trying to convey imo)

latentsea 2y ago
I've been fluent in Japanese for over a decade and am about 6 months into studying Korean. I understand the issues of Kanji vs no Kanji well. Korean successful ditched it, isn't painful to read, is far more accessible to read for beginners, and doesn't suffer from an extreme long-tail of ambiguous difficult readings like Japanese does. With Japanese no matter how many vocab you learn, you hit new words like 仲人, think you know how to read it correctly, can never quite be sure, look it up every time as a consequence and are surprised often enough at the reading that you never really settle into a sense of confidently being able to read new words correctly. It sucks. In contrast I was able to score 50% on the reading section of TOPIK II after only 4 months of study. So, on balance I'd say reading Korean is way easier because they ditched Kanji.
- lbotos 2y ago
  Thanks for clarifying. I don't disagree that Korean does seem easier, but I still think you are slightly confusing what the GP is trying to say. I've never seen "仲人" before but I'm pretty sure it's some kind of person. https://jisho.org/search/%E4%BB%B2%E4%BA%BA https://jisho.org/search/%E4%BB%B2%E4%BA%BA 仲 go-between (which I never saw before but I knew the radicals as "person middle" but didn't know what they were combined, but this one made great logical sense) 人 person So while I can't "read" it (in Japanese) I can know what it means pretty confidently as kanji very regularly mean the same thing in compound words. If I saw "なこうど" I'd have no idea because those hiragana don't mean anything to me until I learn the meaning. Am I making sense? Like the first time I saw 花火 I knew "flower fire" and was able to guess firework. same with 大人 being adult. I'm not saying you are wrong that Korean is easier -- I'm saying, learning kanji can make it easier to understand a lot of meaning with never actually being able to "read" the words. and the reading is absolutely hard because of kunyomi and onyomi etc etc.
  - latentsea 2y ago
    Being able to guess the meaning of new words was neat earlier on in the Japanese journey, but in the end the problem of "gah but the how hell do you actually read this?" was a greater detriment than that was a benefit. In contrast if I saw なこうど I could at least be perfectly confident I was reading it correctly even if I didn't know what it meant. Sometimes I may be able to guess from the context at least partially what it means, but if not, then I could simply opt to move on having collected an instance of seeing the word. I might then later hear it elsewhere, or perhaps see it again and if I encounter it enough times I can get curious and look it up. I could do the same thing with Kanji except I'd have to look it up anyway to be confident I was reading it correctly. Else I just don't know what the word is, so its harder to mentally file it anywhere in my brain. I found this lead to a very long-tail of pain when reading Japanese that didn't abate even when I got up to around 17k vocab in Anki after which I just said bugger it. So, on balance I prefer the set of problems that no Kanji poses over the set of problems that Kanji poses.
    - vunderba 2y ago

fenomas 2y ago

Not for beginners. But for fluent speakers, kanji are very necessary to distinguish all the homophones. E.g. 効果, 硬化, 降下.. are hard to learn, but they're clear. こうか is much easier to learn, but it could mean any of 10-15 unrelated things.

latentsea 2y ago
All of which native speakers have no trouble distinguishing between in conversation when there are no Kanji anywhere. It's the same with homophones in any language, usually the context makes it clear because the alternatives don't fit. The homophones in Japanese and Korean pretty much all come from the vocabulary they share with Chinese which makes up the bulk of the vocabulary for both those languages. One doesn't use Kanji anymore, and no one seems to struggle to read it? Japanese on the other hand I have seen even natives struggle to read. Heck even the existence of furigana in novels is an admission of this.
- EE84M3i 2y ago
  Written kana drops intonation information that's present in speech. Writing with kanji makes up for this, and also allows for more complex sentences that aren't as common in spoken Japanese. I personally find the most difficult part of reading kana-only text to be detecting word boundaries. It's much easier when kanji is used, and I'm not even a native speaker. An English analogy isthatyoucouldwritewithoutspacesandbeunderstood but it's more difficult to read and unnatural. Young gen-z types on Japanese Twitter abbreviate everything, but even they don't drop kanji.
  - pezezin 2y ago
    That is what whitespaces are for, which Korean also uses.
  - latentsea 2y ago
    Adding whitespace is a pretty simple solution. Heck if you really, really absolutely needed to resolve tonal ambiguity in kana you could add something to Kana to do that. That'd enhance the readability even further since, it's basically impossible for foreigners to learn correct intonation in Japanese unless they explicitly study it and that's on top of memorizing all that Kanji, but it would become explicit. I can recall exactly once in the last 10 years having a conversation where the there was ambiguity between two homonyms and someone asked a clarifying question to resolve it. The vast majority of the time it's just clear from context. So.. I would say even that ambiguity isn't something people would actually have much a problem with.

GreyMolecules 2y ago

Without Kanji, it severely degrades readability. One has to reconstruct the word from syllables, which introduces another layer of cognitive load. In Korean, it works similarly as well though, most people nowadays are quite used to not incorporating Hanja in sentences over multiple decades, to the point where it would be impractical to mingle Hanja in Korean.

latentsea 2y ago
Yes, so basically the arguments around lack of Kanji leading to worse readability are actually hitting upon the fact that readability suffers short-term not because Kanji enhances readability,but because they're simply not used to processing the language only through kana, and that were they to acclimatize to that, it becomes readable again and in fact easier to read than before.
- pcwalton 2y ago
  I do wonder whether kana might be slightly easier to read if ん were written as part of the preceding syllable like it is in hangul.
  - latentsea 2y ago
    Kana would be slightly easier to read if we spent as much time reading in Kana as we have in Kanji. Hangul has some funny rules around patchim that need to be memorized. Kana does a great job avoiding this, so on balance kana is probably just fine compared to Hangul.
    - mmis1000 2y ago
      I don't think so. Kana just don't have enough entropy compares to Kanji. A kanji can be compose with up to twenty strokes with high variety of stroke patterns. Those excessive complexity make it identifiable even in extreme situations. (Blurry or tainted or whatever situation). In some case, a kanji with half of its size masked still be decoded without any ambiguity. But this will never work with an voice based language.

zzo38computer 2y ago

I think kanji can make more clear the meaning if it can be understood, but not for pronouncing. Kana is other way around. (In case it is difficult, it is also possible to add furigana.) I think it is beneficial to have both in Japanese writing.

Ferret7446 2y ago

As someone who isn't even fluent in Japanese, I find it easier to read text with Kanji (in contexts where I am relatively fluent) than without. Japanese without Kanji is like English (or any Latin alphabet language) without punctuation or spaces or capitalization. And also if English had a ton more homophones. You basically need to word-split and disambiguate as part of the reading processing; it's painful.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
latentsea 2y ago
This is because this is how you've trained your brain to process Japanese. Korean includes white space for this reason, and since everyone gets used to reading it with no Hanja, they don't find it awkward. So, it's perfectly possible to ditch Kanji and add spaces and have a way more accessible language.
- Ferret7446 2y ago
  That doesn't solve the homophone issue though.
  - localfirst 2y ago
    usually a parenthesis with corresponding character is used to be explicit or to avoid confusion but its strictly for chinese loan words like: ex) 시간 (時間) compared to furigana (note that its not even possible to display the phonetic hiragana): 第二巻 younger generation are no longer learning Chinese so more English/European loan words are directly used which ironically fixes the issue. it is impossible to converse in Korean without using English/European loan words ex) 아이러니 (irony) This allows new ideas/concepts to quickly disseminate in the collective Korean psyche. Constantly new words are being invented, slangs used by primary/middle school are unknowable. Abbreviation/concat combos to create totally new words: ex) 씹상타치 (way **ing above average) also written as ㅆㅅㅌㅊ (wfaa) literally means
Dwedit 2y ago