Kanji in Japanese , Chinese and Japanese languages

   For those who are interested , the first video explains why Kanji (Chinese characters) are used in the Japanese language and the second one explains the differences and similarities between the two languages.

   To me , the first thing that comes to mind about why Kanji is still in use in today's Japanese language is that the sentence (in prints or writing ) will be longer , so books or pages (e-book) will be thicker and much more scrolling will be performed even reading articles on electronics devices. One of the advantages of Chinese is that , one word (or character) can pack a lot of meaning , but the Japanese language tends to use a lot more characters to mean the sdame thing 9as explained in the video) . Secondly , many Japanese words are homophones (same pronounciation but can have different meanings ), Kanji solves that problem. As explained in the video, native Japanese use pitch accent to distinguish meaning . The simplest one is sake , if it is high pitch in ke , then it means the wine, if it has no pitch, then it is salmon (the fish).


   Ancient Japan did not have a writing system, it was the Chinese "import" from an eon ago that inspired the Japanese to have a writing system. Early use of Chinese characters was to convey Japanese pronunciations , not meanings, so when a Chinese person reads some Japanese ancient scrolls wirtten in Chinese characters, the text wouldn't make any sense to the Chinese, because the Chinese characters are used to convey pronunciations rather than meanings, you can think of Kanji characters as musical notes.




    Japanese Chinese characters (Kanji) pronunciations are closer to Cantonese pronunciations than Mandarin (used in mainland China) pronunciations , lucky for me : ) , even though most Japanese Chinese (Kanji) characters are based on simplified Chinese. Kanji writings are not always the same as the Chinese character; also, Japanese Kanji characters do not always have the same meanings as the same Chinese characters.

     I am quite impressed by the creator of the video in his knowledge of this subject. As the ceator of the video mentioned, since both languages use Chinese characters, one can guess the rough meanings of the sentences, but lack the accuracy and details ; also as I mentioned, the meanings of Chinese characters in Japanese are often different from the meanings of the same Chinese characters.

     Both the Chinese and Japanese share many axioms and phrases that have the same meanings.