How many people aren’t aware that Kanji are Chinese?

14 comments

1. I don’t know if it’s completely accurate to say that kanji are Chinese now. I mean, they are Chinese in origin, but as they are now (and have been for many, many years) used by Japanese in their own language, when they are used in Japanese I think they can also be considered Japanese now.

2. I come across this issue mainly when I talk to people learning Japanese who ask why certain things in Kanji are the way they are and how they make no logical sense whatsoever. I tell them, the answer is almost always, “because this made sense in ancient Chinese”.

   This occurs in Chinese loanwords too. One common thing I come across is people asking, “why does the word for chair, 椅子, or the word for hat, 帽子, have the word “child” in it?

   Even people who teach Japanese, like George Trombley from the Japanese from Zero series, clearly have no idea and tell you to just accept it, or they come up with some silly mnemonic that they invented.

   The real reason is of course, 子 in Chinese doesn’t just mean child, it’s a noun marker, like -tion in English (institution, diction, separation, intuition). It makes sense grammatically in Chinese.

3. Ehh it literally means “Chinese Characters” so to answer ur question it would be pretty much anyone who doesnt know it.

4. 5 or 6

   The rest are aware

5. I don’t think I know a single person who did know that kanji is derived from Chinese. It’s just common knowledge wether it be from textbooks or seeing actual Chinese.
   That being said much like the Latin alphabet it’s a set of characters that are shared amongst multiple languages so if they are used to write Japanese it’s Japanese

6. Even more don’t know Hiragana and Katakana were HEAVILY based on Chinese.

7. But kanji are not Chinese. To say kanji are. Hi Rae is just like saying people do not realize that English is not Greek.

8. Thinking it’s a pretty biased sample asking here. I think the average American almost certainly can’t differentiate Asian texts like Korean, Chinese, or Japanese from each other. I would think the general perception is they are all individual languages with unique systems, and i would say they would probably associate kanji with the language they are most exposed to. To find out who does I would guess Japanese students maybe half a semester in would know there would likely be hiragana or katakana somewhere in a reading to differentiate Chinese and Japanese. I only knew the origin of Kanji when Chinese students in my class could read meanings we hadn’t learned. Still I guess it comes down to if they know they know, but the knowing population is quite slim among average English speaking individuals.

9. Can you reword that first sentence?
   I am having some trouble parsing out what you are trying to say.

10. I mean, it really depends on demographic. People who know nothing about asian languages, versus people who are studying Japanese, versus people who know chinese, versus people who are interested in linguistics, etc.

    I think it’s not strange for people who don’t know much about asian languages to not know that kanji is derived from Chinese.

11. You seem to like taking kanji very literally, so I have to ask you: Do you think when someone accuses another person of being a 痴漢, they literally mean that the other person is foolish or perverted **Chinese** person? Is it the case that only the people of 漢 can be molesters?

12. That completely depends on demographic.

    I can’t tell you when I first learned it, but it was before I ever learned JP and feels like common sense to me. (This is obviously hindsight to be clear)

    I don’t interact with CN much, but I’d imagine it’s entirely possible to not know these things but know Chinese, especially if you’re not geographically near Japan.

    I’m not sure there’s a single Japanese person (who grew up with the language) who doesn’t know that. When learning, I’d frequently learn kanji and ask why they’re one way or another only for my partner, a first gen who grew up in Tokyo, to say “blame china, we don’t know, we just know it means what it means”

    Americans? Probably depends completely on how interested in the country(ies) they are. My mother can’t even tell the difference between Korean characters and kanji, and that seems common. I doubt they know the first thing about the origins of Japanese characters lol

13. Yes, some people aren’t aware that Japanese Kanji characters were taken from the Chinese language… But pretty much all languages are derived from older languages and I don’t think most people know about those much, either.

    Japanese characters are now Japanese because they have been adapted into the Japanese language and have become linked to the culture over 1500 years,

    But yes, they were taken from the Chinese language.

14. I have not met a single person that knows of the three Japanese scripts that does not know that Kanji are chinese. I understand if people that have no knowledge of the Japanese language don’t know it but I think everyone who starts learning Japanese knows that Kanji are chinese as it is one of the first things you learn (that there are 3 scripts and what they are called and what they are used for).
    Outside of people who learn Japanese though I have not had this discussion with anyone so I can’t be sure of an exact percentage