Aso's reading blunders spark study spree

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oreoreda at 01:47 PM JST - 9th March

He's doing Gakushuin proud.
herefornow at 02:39 PM JST - 9th March

smithinjapan -- you make excellent points. But, if nearly 50% of Japanese state that they still need to master the 2,000 characters needed just for daily life, how "practical" a language can it be? This is a country with a: shrinking/aging population; shrinking economy; and, likely shrinking world importance due to the above. Why waste time teaching kids thousands of characters which do not increase Japan's competitiveness one bit? Sure, from a cultural standpoint, great. But, strategically, it isn't. Everything has to get translated into a foreign language to do business outside of Japan, so all the nuances of Japanese you praise are lost anyway.
helloklitty at 03:26 PM JST - 9th March

A bigger problem is that not everyone in Japan is well-educated.

I would say that Aso Taro is well-educated, but also 67 years old and has probably forgotten more than I've ever learned.

Kanji is still a crappy language system. Also, the Japanese numbering system is stupid. One ten thousand, two ten thousands, three ten thousands....
Robusta at 03:58 PM JST - 9th March

jonnyboy: "japanese has far too many homonyms for this to work, it seems"

Point taken, but homonyms are usually comprehensible through context, don't you think? Although I agree that Japanese does have rather more than, say English.

Perhaps any ambiguity could be tackled by even more loan words ;)

herefornow - I concur - any written system should surely be evaluated in terms of its practicality. Japanese takes so long to learn, whether you're a native or not, that it is impractical. That the system is both interesting and subtle is not in doubt, but the impracticality will always preclude the language from being an 'international' one. I wonder how long it will be before it dies out entirely, taking a unique culture with it.

We are privileged to see 'Japan' as it is now - in 100 years, my guess is that it won't be here.
T_rexmaxytime at 05:00 PM JST - 9th March

I do not think Japanese is difficult. I've seen few accomplished foreigners who speak the language and write kanjis. having said that I also know many foreigners whose been in Japan for ages and are still not capable of conversing in basic japanese. So I guess it depends on the will of each individual.
smithinjapan at 07:49 PM JST - 9th March

herefornow: "This is a country with a: shrinking/aging population; shrinking economy; and, likely shrinking world importance due to the above. Why waste time teaching kids thousands of characters which do not increase Japan's competitiveness one bit?"

Well, I agree and disagree. I mean what's the alternative? Switching everything to kana would not at all be an easy process, and you would have to rewrite all documents in existence to this date, excluding books designed for 2 year olds. What's more, while I agree to an extent that learning kanji can be a waste of time, cultural understanding aside, one could argue the exact opposite of your point: that kanji would make them MORE competitive. This isn't only because of the hypothetical switch to an all-kana system, but also because if they master more kanji than others they would be able to get by in countries that use Chinese a lot better... in terms of comprehension of the writing, and writing themselves. I'm just throwing out a possible opposite to what you said, just for fun.

hellokitty: Taro was exposed to a good education, and got into the finest establishments, but he is not a well-educated man because no one dared challenge him when he was wrong. He STILL thinks that's the case, and tells reporters who ask him tough questions, "I am the PM of Japan! Don't you have better things to do than talk to the PM in this fashion?"

As to the number system of Japanese, it's not stupid if you take into consideration the fact that it use to deal with larger numbers in units of fours, instead of threes like most Western countries. For example, long ago "10,000" would be written "1,0000", and hence, 'ichi-man'. 'Juu-man' would be 10,0000, and so on (of course, written in kanji). Taking on the system of units of threes while keeping the way the numbers of said the same was the only stupid part about it. Regardless, it's only "one ten thousand" if you choose literally translate the 'one' and then apply the rest in Japanese to the English system of counting. Are you telling me when you talk to your friends you actually say, "I have two ten thousand yen"?
cleo at 09:24 PM JST - 9th March

Get rid of kanji and you essentially throw away a thousand years of literature. It's not worth it.

As for why Aso can't read too well even though he was exposed to a good education; maybe he's just thick? Silk purse / pig's ear kinda thing. Listening to him talk in the Diet and his chats with the reporters, he doesn't sound like the sharpest knife in the cutlery drawer. Plus he was probably never expected to actually study, like as if he was ever going to have to work for a living like the plebs.
sumikochan at 01:13 AM JST - 10th March

yeah, if the japanese got rid of kanji i think that would be a mess too. i hate reading japanese with no kanji it's possibly harder that reading with kanji. as for the chinese having no problem... they only have one reading for each character, where as japan has made it so you can read a character at LEAST 2 different ways.
helloklitty at 07:35 AM JST - 10th March

I do not think Japanese is difficult. I've seen few accomplished foreigners who speak the language and write kanjis. having said that I also know many foreigners whose been in Japan for ages and are still not capable of conversing in basic japanese. So I guess it depends on the will of each individual.

I know one individual who mastered it. He had greasy hair that clung to his forehead and kept his laundry in the kitchen cupboard. When I went to get a cup, some dirty socks fell on the floor in front of me.

No, it's not difficult if you are willing to give up the pleasures of life.
ANOTSUSAGAMI at 07:41 AM JST - 10th March

There are a lot of kanji that are redundant and therefore useless, as well as just confusing. I could believe the 50,000 kanji seeing as the same word, with the same pronounciation and meaning can have multiple kanji. For example, いれる-to enter, has 3 possible non-archaic kanji. First is 入れる, which I'm sure most of you have seen, but how many of you have seen 函れる or 容れる. They all mean exactly the same thing and are pronounced in the same way. Then what about the words that have kanji, but are so often rendered in hiragana that the kanji are forgotten? ありがとう for example, is often seen in the hiragana rendering, and none of my Japanese friends could read 有り難う-the kanji rendering. I realise my small sample of friends is in no way scientific, but it does raise questions. If they won't get rid of kanji, at the very least, they should develop an effective way to look up new kanji. In romance languages, I can instantly look up new words with a dictionary. New kanji isn't so simple.
Patrick Smash at 01:02 PM JST - 10th March

The stupidest thing is when people are given names that cannot be pronounced from the kanji, or have multiple readings of their name. If you can't tell from a kanji if you are shagging Tomoko or Yuko, that's really quite ridiculous.
cleo at 01:19 PM JST - 10th March

If you can't tell from a kanji if you are shagging Tomoko or Yuko, that's really quite ridiculous.

Or maybe you could spend a coupla minutes in polite conversation first? That would give you a chance to find out if it's Tomoko or Yuko. Though writing letters is quite cultural too, I must admit. :-)

Actually an initially unreadable name can be an advantage; if people have to ask how to pronounce it, they're more likely to remember it than if it's just another Ichiro or Taro. Both Mr cleo and cleoson have moderately unreadable names.
watarigarasu at 09:50 PM JST - 10th March

I'm illustrating a point with all the italics - see explanation at the end.

First let me admit that I live in the USA and I know very little Japanese, and most of what I do know I've gotten from watching anime... but anyway, I understand the desire to simplify a difficult writing system. English writing is similarly difficult, because even though it's based on an alphabet, almost nothing is spelled as it is pronounced, and literacy depends on memorizing the letter combination for each individual word, much like memorizing radical combinations for Kanji. It would be beneficial to simplify such a difficult system. But there's also the argument that Kanji shouldn't be eliminated because of all the tradition and history tied in with their use. Perhaps more frequent use of furigana would be a good idea.

Now an important question: Why are people suggesting the removal of loan words from Japanese? Loan words are just as much a part of any language as are native words. Take English for instance - more than half of the words in the language are of foreign origin, and if you removed all loan words from the language, you would not be able to express yourself at all. Loan words from my message here are all marked with italics to demonstrate just how important they are! Now if English can have so many loan words and yet still be English, why complain about a similar situation with Japanese?
ANOTSUSAGAMI at 11:06 PM JST - 10th March

I don't think you fully understand the differences between Japanese and English. I stated before, in romance languages new words can be instantly found by spelling. English has spelling rules that help you pronounce new words upon seeing them written and then write them later. There are loan words in English that don't follow English pronunciation protocols, but again just use a dictionary. Without furigana even native speakers of Japanese would be lost faced with a kanji they aren't familiar with. This makes learning kanji inefficient at best.
ANOTSUSAGAMI at 11:33 PM JST - 10th March

Watarigarasu- Wonder if you notice that the kanji rendering of your screename is a case in point? 渡り鳥 Wataridori and 渡り烏 look the same, but tori has one more stroke than karasu. People commonly make the mistake of adding the stroke on karasu. There are more examples of commonly misused kanji, but I thought it interesting to mention.