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Originally Posted by Kudryavka
That is what happens when you force a cube into a circle hole, forcing the hanzi to fit the syllables and nuances of the totally unrelated Japanese language, which is not similar to any Chinese language at all. A lot of ways they use kanji are counterproductive and make no sense, like multiple syllables per kanji or more than one reading per kanji...
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"Totally unrelated"? The kanji at the worst have different cultural references behind them like "面白" is literally "white face" but in Japanese it means "interesting" (from theater makeup), but once you learn the reasoning it makes sense. There are also some characters that don't appear so often in Chinese (mostly in classical texts), like 逢 (to run into) but are common in Japanese. This isn't "counterproductive", it's just a matter of localization. If anything it is the Japanese themselves trying to fit the cube into the circle hole with things like かみかぜ (kamikaze) for 神風 instead of "shin-fuu" (which I imagine it would be in on-yomi), which is why I suggest that they might use hiragana for anything that isn't in on-yomi form.
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Ugh...no way. Japanese grammar with pure kanji is a nightmare I don't ever want to face. And I'm speaking as someone who is racially Chinese...
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Oh no, the grammar should certainly remain in hiragana, otherwise it would just be classical Chinese with Japanese readings.
What I don't like is when non-grammar words are written in hiragana, or worse, katakana.
Katakana is the worst part about Japanese. Even when it is "English", it is often a bitch to figure it out. Take the word 加速度 (acceleration), for instance. If I see that I go "ah, kasoku-dou" and carry on. Now let's say some scientist spent too much time in the States and decided to write アックセラレシオン (akkuserareshion), I do not see the word, instead my brain explodes. Disregarding the fact that 加速度 takes only three spaces to write while that thing needs ten, it is also harder to read. If I encountered that word out of the blue I would probably spend more than a minute at least figuring it out. What's worse, you can't just pronounce "acceleration" the correct English way or else they won't understand you, you
have to add the mistakes to make it "Japanese". I know the Japanese themselves find this sort of thing rather trendy but it's a real pain to try to learn it.