Why does Japan still use chinese characters?

Something I've always wondered about is if Japanese hate Chinese so much, why do they still use Chinese characters? Even korea got rid of them. Any Japanons around to enlighten me?

Thanks

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their language would be tremendously difficult to read without them

how do you communicate stick letters with people. how do you spend enough time reinforcing a writing system with 64 gabbagorillion characters, each comprised of 214 strokes? i dont understand

i will guess each character top to bottom left to right gimme a sec

Chinese civilizational achievements good
Individual lower class Chinese people bad
You understand now?

how do you know tens of thousands of words?

are you japanese or just talking out of your ass?

>Not just learning 1 word and pronouncing it differently
youtube.com/watch?v=9jtiw721RAg

meaning start at top left go to the right and then down at to left as though reading a book
>selling knives
>inflatable punching bag person
>going to church or opening a fridge
>a jacuzzi
>jogging
>massage seat
>Muslim person
>talmud-o-vision
>a person with a big chest
>teletubbies
>barbecuing
>dick in a box
>footrub
>mentally retarded person
>huge penis
>computer mouse
>normal and thin person
>doing the splits
>using a computer
>a snail
>a bar, you know, for drinking at
>praying but not really
>sex or family
>scolding someone

>how do you spend enough time reinforcing a writing system with 64 gabbagorillion characters, each comprised of 214 strokes? i dont understand
In linguistics we call the Chinese logograms low information density because of the effort it takes to create them versus the relatively small amount of information they convey. Even despite the fact that complex idiomatic expressions and metonyms might be telling the same story many different ways.

They actually make our language easier to read. Those characters are also deeply ingrained into our culture. Stop talking about shit you don't understand.

>Stop talking about shit you don't understand.

well duh, that's why I'm asking.

>Those characters are also deeply ingrained into our culture.

so do you consider them Japanese characters? I mean, how can you look at something all day everyday and be reminded of what you hate?

>well duh, that's why I'm asking.
I apologize for the hostility, that's a fair question. It just gets asked here ad nauseum.
>so do you consider them Japanese characters? I mean, how can you look at something all day everyday and be reminded of what you hate?
The China of today isn't the China who gave us those characters. That's like comparing Augustus to Berlusconi. We also have two other alphabets that we use with it. The Latin alphabet came from Italy but it's used everywhere from Norway to Argentina. Does the letters I'm using to type this remind you of Italy?

Fuck you are dumb.

There's a very small amount that was created in Japan. These characters don't exist in traditional.

>Does the letters I'm using to type this remind you of Italy?

not italy per se but of the glory of rome that has survived for thousands of years

XLV - MAGA

>Does the letters I'm using to type this remind you of Italy?

yes. every white knows his/her roots are greco-roman

I hope it sounded funnier in your head

god damn you proxyfags are always hangry as fuck

Simple: Tradition.

The same reason the US uses the Imperial measurements, and will never give up on owning guns.

This is also most likely why Asians are smarter than other ethnicities.

Take Japan. They use 3 different written systems. They intermix them, to make it easier to read.

They could go to a different writing system, but they won't, due to their traditions, the fact that they'd no longer be able to read their older and ancient written works, and because it just feels right to them, since they spent years learning it.

explain

ok chang

>Simple: Tradition.

so japan is basically sinocized?

Did you know that our numbers are "arabic" numerals?

yes. that's why i don't hate them, as I know the contributions they made to western civilization

Because Hiragana and Katakana are inferior to Hangul so the Japanese never made a complete switch like Koreans. Japanese is actually even more perfectly structures than Korean for using a block phonetic glyph script. The Japanese alphabets create strings of text that are waaaay to long, while Hangul can be much more condensed. Japanese needs Chinese characters to condense sentences, and words. Often, alphabetics are used only for grammar in a sentence. Personally, I think the Japanese alphabet could be reformatted into blocks like Korean, but they'll never do it.

...

what's wrong with long sentences?

my face when you have barbecuing right

It takes up too much space on a page, and requires more eye movement to convey smaller amounts of information. I'm not talking about the word choice making a sentence long. I'm talking about the structure of the letters/characters making sentences PHYSICALLY long. The genius of Hangul is that it conveys about the same amount of information in the same amount of space as Chinese characters. A single Hangul glyph is a single syllable in Korean. A single Chinese character is a single syllable in Chinese. Since Hangul is even MORE efficient for Korean than Chinese characters, it was able to completely replace them.

Hiragana/Katakana failed to replace Chinese characters in part because they are not as efficient at condensing information, even compared to Japanese read in Chinese characters. Japanese needs to make compound glyphs using a single vowel character + a single consonant character + an optional ending stacked together like Korean. If it did that, then words would be 50% the length they currently are in Hiragana/Katakana, and you would no longer need to use Kanji to fit more information in a smaller space.

Why does America still use imperial measurements?

Something I've always wondered about is if America hates England so much, why do they still use imperial measurements? Even India got rid of it. Any Amerifats around to enlighten me?

Thanks

> if America hates England

we don't?

Kyujitai still exists at least

Then renounce your independence

interesting. thanks for the thoughtful analysis

What does America still use the Imperial system?

I would, except they're even more cucked than we are

because our heritage is anglo you retarded fuck. why do you speak english?

The human mind is very good at recognizing pictograms, and so there is nothing fundamentally difficult with learning Chinese characters
People propagated the meme that these characters are hard to learn, causing the far east to become backwards
China was memed into simplifying the writing, and Korean was memed into abandoning it altogether
but later people realized that every single person who went through K-12 education can read them just fine
Writing is still somewhat difficult but that is really a non-problem with computers/smartphones
With this in mind, Japan made the right choice in my opinion

This is the only user in this thread that actually knows what he's talking about. The entire Japanese written language is structured around kanji. Kanji are used to help people separate words. If text was made exclusively of Hiragana and Katakana it would be nearly impossible to read. You may be able to read something written by a child that lacks Kanji, but that's because they have a small vocabulary. If you were reading something like a book it could become nearly impossible to understand without Kanji.The huge quantity of homonyms would make the language even more context dependent than it already is as well. Their entire written language would cease to be functional without Chinese characters.

Why do japanese not use romanji?

Japa have vowels and so Latin script works for them.

Japanese people cannot explain it. You need an analytical-minded person for that, and Japanese people are not like that.
The reason they still use them is two-fold. The first one, because the japanese person feels an irresistible attraction to "impractical beauty". The "japanese way" of doing things, for shorts, is to perform tasks in the most impractical way as long as it looks cool and beautiful from the outside. They believe the impracticability adds beauty, not unlike people found beauty in l33t-speak.
The second reason, and most important, is because Japanese people never question authority. Suggesting an improvement to any system implies questioning the authority and talent of your higher-up, therefore it is socially frowned upon and never happens. In the case of Japanese writing system, the higher-ups are not the Government, as one would initially believe, but the long-dead scholars that badly borrowed these characters from Chinese Buddhists.
Add from that a badly-conceived nationalist pride on them, and Japanese desire to keep stupid gaijins out of their culture, and now you know why there is no chance the Chinese characters will be abandoned, short of another war.

Japanese do not think. They just do, because that's how it is.

It's that simple.

How long does it take to become literate?

Japan uses 4 alphabets, one has 240 characters. HS students must master two to graduate

>our
sure thing weeb

It's possible to explain it in Japanese language.
But it's hard to explain it in English language, because westerners don't know the advantage of using kanji.

Did you even read what you typed before you hit "post"?

tradition. oldfag reporting in. 3rd grade for me was 1973. did science experiment with mice --- wheat bread vs white bread. weighed mice. grams. we aren't adverse to the metric system. any of us that has a tool box has wrenches and sockets in both systems. we know water freezes at 0 and boils at 100 but we just prefer to use fahrenheit. we know a meter is a tad longer than a yard but we prefer the inches, feet, yards, miles to metric. any burger that uses illicit substances is an ace at the metric system. we do buy (some) soft drinks and (most) liquor in metric but we still refer to a 750ml of liquor as 1/5 of a gallon even though it isn't. i'll be the first to extoll the simplicity, uniformity, and logic of the metric system but traditions do die hard.

kanji act as a defacto intelligence uotient test in basic life tasks and communication. their educated vocabulary is taken largely from chinese

imagine if, in english, the educated class spoke large amounts of latin

dumb people are unable to do so in japan. to the degree they can do so, it is difficult, and not imitatable

no nigger science man effect going on in japan

it lets japan run a class system based defacto on innate intelligence ithout a managing bureaucracy. by your speech EVERY single person can tell roughly your intelligence level

I agree it would be hard with kana, but less so with romaji or hangul.
Best would be if they just kept like 500 kanji, and cut those that are used only in a handful compounds.

Same reason why Germanics use Latin script today.

awesome!!!

Yea face it. Your language looks fucking retarded. It's all nice chinese letters untill you put one of those abominations of your which doesn't fit.
Japanease characters in japanease language are like niggers in a civilized society.
They just don't fit

Because

hangul is ingenious but fails at the basic function of language: to fulfill the social order and prevent terms from being manipulated in meaning

the most leftist sinicised asian societies are the ones that abandoned kanji (korea/vietnam)

if a term is tied directly to meaning its meaning canno be altered

in japan/china the term for racist is "determining clan difference" roughly

thus it not only does not have a negative connotation, it cannot be GIVEN one, and cannot be used in such a manner as to say "niggers cant be racist against japanese"

everyone that can see difference is as "determinator of clan difference" and its not bad to them

Tradition and cultural significance; most of the Japanese vocabulary (and prob most of Korean and Vietnamese as well) comes from Chinese, so using the the kanji is a sort of etymological orthography. East Asian languages also have lots of homophones, this probably contributed a lot to the creation and perpetuation of this impractical non-phonetic writing system.

>nationalist pride

you see, this is the thing I don't get. how can japanese nationalism be compatible with hating chinese heritage? that's like me hating england even though I speak english and live in an anglocized world

Why do you still use Arabic numerals if you hate sandniggers?

>don't know the advantage of using kanji.

what's the advantage?

>imagine if, in english, the educated class spoke large amounts of latin

The educated class does speak large amounts of Latin, not to mention 60% of English words are derived from Latin

so cognitive dissonance?

Kanji-words should be understood as slightly better acronyms, not "real" words. They're like writing "BRB", but using "meaning" rather than the initial letter as the shortcut.
This removes ambiguity when reading, but extensive use of those acronyms has turned Japanese into a smurf language when spoken. However, Japanese people avoid most acronyms in conversation because they are confusing, which is why spoken Japanese appears to be easier to learn.
Removing kanji would mean removing most of kanji-words, as they would become as confusing as an english dialect composed mostly of acronyms.

because I don't hate sandniggers. why do you?

for those curious:
>love
>being alone
>rising
>evil
>beauty
>bird
>blood
>blossom
>blue
>brave
>grilling
>drawing
>celebration
>rain
>cold
>color(also sex)
>complete
>crying
>dancing
>danger
>darkness
>daughter
>day of the week
>desire

many thanks to the kanji damage method

Who said we hate England?

no. you think you understand but you dont. none of you do

half of the japanese vocabulary are chinese cognates. even n chinese, a language that has more sounds and tones, many of them are indecipherable. they lost their sound profile in japanese. it is impossible to understand if you don't use kanji. romaji are even orse than kana

it'd be like simplifying english/german. the grammatical rules and strange spellings make it easier to listen to and read for everyone that isnt an IDIOT. it also indicates language of origin, such as kaiser>ceaser

japanese/chinese is the fastest language on the planet to read on avg.

try policing and simplifying english. you are delivering the planet to idiots

What gay ass weeb wrote that infographic its way wrong

Keeps the soulless chinks busy writing, otherwise they would just be figuring out ways to kill animals in ever more cruel fashions and eat them alive

b/c nips low-key admire chinks. just watch, once china overtakes usa, nippon will once again orbit the middle kingdom like it always has in history.

That's not 愛 you dumdum.

Pssshhh... as if chinese would have a character for “huge penis”

>in japan/china the term for racist is "determining clan difference" roughly

No it's not. It's "person type/kind -ism" or "person type/kind distinction."

>no. you think you understand but you dont. none of you do
You know nothing about me or us. Stop talking like that, it makes you look like a dipshit.
>romaji are even orse than kana
How?

Looking at chinese characters all day does remind japanese of china, but then they get all rapey as a result and go jerk off to violent tentacle porn

>nice
>Chinese
Pick one

derived from french. it lost declensions and adopted french terms for common objects, rather than using latin for high level concepts. that latin entered into english via conceptual language from the church and university system, utterly alien to our actual language (like kanji)

abolishing kanji is more akin to abolishing grammar or suplerlatives in english

imagine, instead of saying, good, better, best you had to say, in natural old english, something like good, gooder, goodest

or good, plus good, double plus good

all because little nigger jim dun do have bad honky time readin' and shiiiieeeeet

the chinese terms adopted often have no point of entry into common speech aside from literacy but convey high level concepts such as entropy (greek) heirarchy, (latin_ etc.

banning kanji in japan is like banning all greek/latin in english

fuck anyone even suggesting either

Tfw imperial system uses theoretically optimal highly composite numbers like 12 instead of retard tier base 10 numbers that come from literally counting on your fingers

Eurofags were not good at math

friendly reminder that all meme flags are cia shill and to be ignored

>japanese
>chinese characters

only a chink would say this. no one admires china

they take longer to pen and read, for one. a LOT longer because japanese is heavy on syllables
they handle verb stem endings in japanese poorly

jp/cn read incredibly fast, by virtue of their system. romaji look like arabic or a jackson pollock painting, too similar, not easily scanned

dont assume about me either. no one remotely familiar ith either language seriously suggests replacing kanji

ok, bastardized chinese characters. better?

>no one remotely familiar ith either language seriously suggests replacing kanji

koreans thought so too. look at them now

Why do you use latin characters?

>if Japanese hate Chinese so much, why do they still use Chinese characters?
The story wouldn't make as much sense without them.

Revitalized Chinese garbage

exactly

you mean because 12 is divisible perfectly in more manners than 10, such as 1/4 or 1/3?

yeah. but don't tell that to eurofags. they'll piss their pants

I am looking. half of them are the last communists in north asia and the other half the first to make fags and islam legal

my nigga
Journey to the West is based af and its maintenance can only be trusted to the japanese
besides the cantonese, the Japanese (and perhaps the Korean) are the only ones who can truly preserve the Chinese literary legacy

Because they carry etymological and philological meaning. It's the same reason the Chinese haven't abandoned their characters for Pinyin like some dumbfuck academics have claimed they would.

> Even korea got rid of them.
Korea still uses them (they're called hanja), just not as much as Japan.

Pictograms are pretty awesome. Each one tells a little story - the etymology is right there. For example this word, 妓女, is the combination of three pictures. There's the picture for woman 女 twice, and 支 is combination of two pictures 又, which is hand, and 木, which is tree. If you notice only the top of tree is used in 支. This is symbolically the branches. Branches without a trunk and roots can't support themselves. So, the hand supports the branches, and the character 支 means support, sustain, and pay. So, 妓 means woman support or woman pay. Add the second woman to create 妓女, which means support a woman for woman. And that is... prostitute. You pay a woman to enjoy the woman.

Once you understand the root characters, when they are combined they make sense.

because anglos dominate the world. the difference is I'm proud of it. how do japs deal with this?

that's liberalism you stupid fuck. we're talking about language

You don't just change your heritage over modern issues. As a Sup Forumsack this should be your gut response

>and its maintenance can only be trusted to the japanese

why? isn't it a chinese story? why would japs preserve chinese culture?

Saves on paper. I mean imagine this.
>use 9 characters for a word
or
>use 3 characters for the same word
No brainer, OP. It's economical