JPHiP Forum
General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Foxy Brown on February 09, 2006, 04:06:45 PM
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Donald Richie has been living in Japan for half a century. The American writer, translator and film scholar has spent most of that time explaining Japan to the English-speaking world. But lately he's found himself, somewhat disconcertingly, in an entirely new role—as an interpreter of Japan to the Japanese. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11182591/site/newsweek)
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It isn't surprising that some of today's youth in Japan can't write kanji properly since they mainly use text messaging...
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Well, typing it into a phone keypad is a far cry from learning the intricate strokes and patterns of real kanji. From what I understand, most everyday japanese writing is actually Hiragana-style. Actual old-school kanji (like the kind that is used for people's first names) is the kind of calligraphy where a single character stands for a whole "word" (like what the group "Arashi" uses).
If I'm wrong, someone please correct me.
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I guess is at all makes sense since you can see the westernization of Japan.
BTW, As the youth of japan use cell phones and computers to write nowadays, there really isn't a need for them to really study kanji since the devices convert the hiragana for them.
From my experiences with the japanese writing system, Kanji's main purpose is to make reading easier because the lack of spaces and words that sound the same but have different kanji. Because the way the language works, they can't always use the "one word per kanji" rule. If that were the case the language would have changed completely and would have probably been alot closer to chinese(structure wise) in both speaking and writing....
There was point I was trying to make there, but I can't seem to find it anymore. >_>