Why japanese people seem to be detaching from kanji use slowly but certainly

9 comments

1. I wonder if it has to do with technology and less and less emphasis on handwriting (=autocorrect) but idk just a speculation 🤔🤔

2. JMdict’s `uk` tag (which turns into that “Usually written using kana alone” note on Jisho.org) is at best an indication of just that, that the word is _usually_ written in kana

   It is applied to anything from words that are written in kanji a decent amount of the time and that anyone who’s even remotely close to average literacy could easily read and write on one extreme, to ones that you’d have to be a massive kanji nerd to know how to read on the other, so it’s honestly almost completely useless as anything more than a hint. In many literary works even words that are essentially always written in kana in normal situations are often written as kanji, and even if you look at some YouTube comments or Japanese reddit or something similarly casual you’ll sooner or later spot many words that are marked as “usually kana” in JMdict being written with kanji

   As for the words you listed, you’d have to be functionally illiterate not to be able to read them as a native speaker. I’m pretty sure I’ve personally encountered every one of those many times (I certainly could’ve read all of them almost instantly even without the romaji), and the vast majority of what I’ve read so far has only been manga. 朝ご飯, お帰り, 僕, 君, and 箸 don’t even have the uk tag, so no idea why you included them

3. Most of those words I usually see written in kanji.

4. You may notice that the words you are listing up tend to be words we frequently use when speaking to children/family. These kinds of words like おやすみ、おかえり, わかる？ or 朝ごはん etc. It’s not that we are detaching from kanji use but rather a significant portion of the contexts we use these particular words in happen to warrant a simplification for the sake of clear communication as the recipient is often a child, or someone that we knew as children leading to a continuing of simplifications made in the past.

5. i’ve read every single one of those words in kanji in modern native literature other than the ones that overuse the 御 character above, and that character absolutely is still used, just not commonly in those particular words

6. I think it is pretty clear that since literary works typically get to 3200-3500 Kanji across multiple volumes that modern Japanese is getting MORE Kanji use rather than less. The Joyo is not enough to read light novels, and I am not even talking about the Kanji used for names either. It is pretty clear that web novels and such will use tons of Kanji that only need to be sight read instead of printed/written because of the digital setting. I think more careful usage of specific kanji flavors will develop in literature, ‘careful application’ one could say. I would like to see a short story about three brothers named ‘Hige’ defined by their facial hair kanji and their sister ‘Hige’. But this is me.

7. I think you’re jumping to conclusions here.

   Jisho / EDICT, a dictionary aimed at English speakers, is not evidence of anything about how native speakers use kanji or any trend over time.

   The joyo list is not a simple list of kanji. There are joyo and non joyo readings too.

   Counterpoint: the joyo list has been expanding over time, e.g. more kanji are taught at school now than there were 20 years ago.

   And native speakers know and use more than that.

8. I think going to a nearby Japanese store that has books written in Japanese or buying any book (even the newest ones) from the your/japan’s Amazon will let you know how much Japan still and will always rely on kanji

   Any fluent Japanese speaker knows that without kanji, this language would be harder to learn, not easier.

9. Usually kana tag in jmdict is so broad it’s basically useless. Half of the words you gave as examples aren’t even tagged with it.