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I was reading upon Japanese writing system history and found out there were several attempts to abolish the use of 漢字 in favor of kana or romaji, e.g. after the WWII. All of those failed, and the only big thing which happened to Japanese writing system since the adoption of Han characters is the invention of kana. However, I couldn't find information about any attempts to construct alternative writing systems, analogous to Hangul in the Korean language.

The main problem with kana/romaji approach is homophonic 漢字 and words. I can see why this could prevent the adoption of kana/romaji-only writing with additional spaces b/w words: it may be enough for video games but is problematic for news, scientific, and legal documents.

The other thing which strikes me is that hiragana and katakana do not exactly match the phonetic structure of the language. For example, the word 漢字 consists of 2 syllables "kan+ji", but in kana, it is written as "かんじ", which is 3 moras. In Hangul, each symbol encodes exactly one syllable, which seems to the language phonetic system much better. This makes me think that Japanese can be encoded in a similar way. This may be just my personal quirk, but I feel like many 音読み kanji should have been a single kana character, e.g. "かん", "ほん", etc. (However, I do understand why it is not so, so don't bother explaining this.)

All this makes me wonder if the invention of kana was the one and only attempt to address the problems related to the use of 漢字. Are there any academic/historic attempts to invent something akin to Hangul for the Japanese language? If there are, how do they address the homophony problem?

Related question on linguistics.SE: Why was Korea able to remove kanji but Japan wasn't when both languages use homophones?

To clarify: I'm not saying or implying that 漢字 is a bad thing which should be replaced. I'm just curious if there were any "creative" attempts of doing that since obviously there are supporters of such ideas even among Japanese people.

Also, I'm not saying that Korea did a better job (compared to Japan) by introducing Hangul, either. Hangul is used as an example only. No comparison intended aside from purely scientific.

scriptin
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  • I doubt just kana is enough for video games. All-kana games are something of the past, because memory limits are no longer a problem. Some games today have enough text to fill a good-sized novel, and god forbid I'd have to read that in all hiragana! – Jimmy Jul 15 '17 at 22:58
  • I mean "enough" as in "enough to work when you cannot use kanji", not as in "it proves that kanji is excessive." – scriptin Jul 15 '17 at 23:00
  • I think Japanese people doesn't have intent to stop usage of kanji completely, neither I heard such attempt like that. Kana symbols primarily created as phonetic lettering but not received well at the the time they're invented. I doubt kana symbols are invented to replace all existing kanji, as current kana derives from man'yōgana practice started from 5th or 6th century. – Tetsuya Yamamoto Jul 15 '17 at 23:09
  • In that sense, I feel like all-kana is "sufficient" for any purpose. From there, it's more a matter of readability, user-friendliness and precise documentation. I'll stop here, since I'm not really addressing your question at hand (I'm clueless about that part). – Jimmy Jul 15 '17 at 23:15
  • I'm aware of that, @TetsuyaYamamoto, but I'm sure there are people who would like to do that. And I think that just one person is enough to create a writing system for an existing language. So, I'm looking for such attempts made by someone. – scriptin Jul 15 '17 at 23:15
  • @scriptin I traced back that "toyo kanji" list created by 文部省 in 1946 with primary intent for gradual replacement of kanji writing in future use, but later it had heavily criticized by scholars & linguists due to usage of 交ぜ書き (effort to replace furigana e.g. 果もの) & 書きかえ (character replacement e.g. 抽籤 => 抽選) invented to enforce it, all such attempts are turned down in 1965. – Tetsuya Yamamoto Jul 15 '17 at 23:33
  • @TetsuyaYamamoto Yes, I've read about that. I'm not particularly interested in "abolishing kanji" idea by itself, but rather in the question how one could possibly do that using some custom writing system. – scriptin Jul 15 '17 at 23:42
  • Several comments: (1) has English considered changing its writing system since adopting the Roman alphabet? Should it? (Isn't asking this of Japanese a bit of the same thing?) (2) 漢字 is not two syllables, it's three mora; (3) kana weren't really an attempt to avoid kanji, they were developed as a kind of shorthand to transcribing things quickly; (4) what benefit do you see to adopting a hangul style vs. kana approach (beyond hangul being more alphabet like)? – A.Ellett Jul 15 '17 at 23:55
  • ^ I'm not saying the question is illegitimate. I think the question can be of interest. But, I think it needs to be carefully phrased to avoid a feel of arrogance along the lines that there's something inherently wrong with the way Japanese is written. – A.Ellett Jul 15 '17 at 23:58
  • @A.Ellett I'm not even implying that anything should be changed. As I said, I was reading about the history and saw there were many attempts to abolish or reduce the use of Han characters. Also, I was reading about Hangul. All of that made me wonder if there were attempts to create something as drastic as Hangul in relation to the Japanese language. – scriptin Jul 16 '17 at 00:03
  • @A.Ellett What I think is: (1) No, the English writing system doesn't change too far even it favors to Roman letters, (2) I agreed that it counted as 3 mora, (3) Back to man'yōgana practice, it established to simplify writing things instead as replacement, (4) It turns to political sense for both (may be off-topic here). – Tetsuya Yamamoto Jul 16 '17 at 00:04
  • @A.Ellett I'm not into holy wars, but I can answer your questions. (1) English never had a problem with "too many/too complex characters" in the first place, hence irrelevant; (2) I believe it's 2 syllables, and I am aware of the fact that Japanese count moras instead of syllables. I made it pretty clear by comparing those two measurements; (3) to me, kana is exactly avoiding kanji, exactly because there was a need for something simpler, "kind of shorthand to transcribing things quickly"; (4) I don't see any benefit in adopting anything, my answer originates from pure curiosity. – scriptin Jul 16 '17 at 00:13
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    @scriptin Sorry about "holy wars". That's why I immediately posted my second comment to try to make clear I didn't want to deligitimatize your question. But I do appreciate you're taking the time to address my four points. Thank you. – A.Ellett Jul 16 '17 at 00:16
  • @scriptin Given how you answered my four questions, I would suggest you tweak your question to one more about the history of orthographic reform in Japan, such as whether anyone knows any good references (I don't, sorry). Obviously orthography would cover way more than "to 字{じ}, or not to 字{じ}". But I would imagine someone must have written something on this: at least in Japanese, right? – A.Ellett Jul 16 '17 at 00:22
  • @A.Ellett Well, I'm not only focusing on actual reforms. If there are some Japanese or foreign scholars who proposed alternative Japanese orthography just in their white papers (even ones which were never accepted by Japanese linguists and/or government), I'd love to see those papers as well. – scriptin Jul 16 '17 at 00:25

2 Answers2

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You said "hiragana and katakana do not exactly match the phonetic structure of the language," but that's not true. The Japanese language is mora-based, and only trained people who study foreign languages recognize the concept of syllable. Everyone believes 天文台 (てんもんだい) has six "sounds" here in Japan, not three. And that's why it's straightforwardly six characters in kana.

Kanji were only "borrowed" from China. The Chinese language is syllable-based (correct me if I'm wrong), but ever since kanji came into use in Japan, Japanese people have understood their readings with the Japanese mora-based brains. There is no wonder old Japanese people used two characters to describe an on-reading of 石 (せき), 活 (かつ), etc; they simply felt there were two "sounds".

Even if you created different phonetic characters for different possible on-readings (a few hundred different characters would be required), you still cannot write many native Japanese words like さむらい, よろこぶ, わたくし, やまたのおろち, etc, with fewer characters. And daily conversations are largely based on such native Japanese words.

Hentaigana were abandoned, but the number of hiragana/katakana currently in use is small enough to remember, and I'm not aware of previous serious attempts to reorganize them (aside from ローマ字).

naruto
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  • Do monolingual Japanese people recognize that, for example, か consists of [k] and [a] sounds? Since there is an あ, and also because kana tables are organized in rows based on the starting consonant sounds, I would think that it is apparent that there are two sounds in this particular mora. – scriptin Jul 16 '17 at 08:11
  • @scriptin Yes, by the time children learn ローマ字 in fourth grade, they know what a consonant/vowel is. But they are usually not aware they are using consonants irregularly in some lines. – naruto Jul 16 '17 at 09:56
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There's no point in creating syllabic alphabets because Japanese phonology consists of mora, instead of syllable. That's why you use moraic alphabets, that is, kana.

Through centuries, some nationalists have insisted abolishing kanji and failed, as you say. The reason I think is not homophones but inconvenience for loosing productiveness for technical terms or variety of expression.

We want to educate our medics or engineers with our own language. I don't understand why we have to bear inconvenience of expressing shogi notation without kanji, for example.

user4092
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  • "Japanese phonology consists of mora, instead of syllable. That's why you use moraic alphabets, that is, kana." Is there historical evidence for the direction of causation? Were kana created based on morae because the pronunciation is, or was the pronunciation modified by the introduction of kana? (Of course historical evidence this old may be hard to come by.) – Mathieu Bouville Jan 26 '19 at 08:24