Will Japanese simplify Kanji?

9 comments

1. Maybe 500 years from now. Until now, we stuck with kanji like this 亹. In all seriousness, it’s a possibility though. Except the majority would have to be on board. Kinda like old Japanese people not talking in “modern” Japanese

2. It’s super easy to type Hiragana on a phone, and super not-easy to type Kanji. Maybe there will be a reduction in common use?

   I’ve heard from people that are more advanced with the language than I am that Kanji adds meaning to longer reads, though.

3. There is a growing number of words that Japanese people already commonly write in hiragana because the kanji is such a chore.

   e.g. いる、ある、する、きれい、もっと、etc.

4. Get rid of kanji all together then add spaces problem fixed

5. no

6. I don’t think so, as there’s least technical incentive in doing so because digital device became the choice of output. I used to write a loot growing up in 90’s but only time I need to write nowadays is name and address in city hall etc, and they’ll soon be digitized anyways.

   In fact, due to digital input, we started to see more complex Kanji in daily exchange for what we used to use just Hiragana just because IME conversion candidate recommends us to use them. I’m talking about word like 流石, 喋る and likes. So digitization is not encouraging the language to be simplified.

   And above all, I’m not feeling any bit more stressful using digital output as I don’t really have to remember Kanji anymore – vague memory is enough now. So I can say that technology made it easy to use Kanji enough to the point the need for improvisation vanished.

7. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it

8. We’re talking about Japan.

   So probably not.

9. Replacing it with a phonetic system would be a much better idea.