In Germany this is a big topic: Chaning the language, so that it includes everyone and you can not assume any gender from it, make it genderless. And also get rid off words that are not nice to minorities and feed stereotypes.
While i understand the idea behind it, i think there is no easy way that it can be applied to the german language.
In the english context it would be like saying worker is only meaning the masculine form and so it has to be: Worker*ress (not a 1:1 but maybe you get the idea behind it)
While i study kanji i noticed a lot of kanji are stereotype-ish.
Just two examples: Man is power and rice field, while pragnent has the woman radical. (some say even man can be pregnat too)
I understand the context of a kanji and from which year the language is coming from.
But just imagine a radical bubble discovers that a man has to be strong and working on a rice field.
I am a bit scared that there is a chance that kanji get canceld in the west (or at least there is going to be a not-so-nice debate.)
The logistics of changing kanji are probably too huge for it to ever be done in any significant way (this is regardless of reason, not for this particular situation). Just imagine what it would entail. Youād have to change all textbooks, train the teachers in the use of the new forms, then have them teach the students. Ok, good so far, but then what about people who already learned how to read? What about books already published? Are people suddenly gonna become illiterate because thereās all these new kanji forms circulating around? I canāt imagine any government going through all that trouble. As for what the West is gonna do, itās probably gonna be irrelevant to Japan, since theyāre the ones actively using the kanji.
I agree it aināt gonna happen, but it did happen in China with the introduction of the simplified characters. And Japanese went through a similar-ish āall the old books are uselessā transition when it did the kana spelling reform. So itās not utterly impossible if the pressure for change is great enough and the traditionalist/conservative/no-change wing is weak enough.
Fair enough, but if that ever were to happen, at that point Iād bet you anything theyād rather just remove all kanji altogether rather than change the problematic ones.
I agree with @jneapan and @ajite. I highly doubt Japan will care at all how the west says things. It would probably take several cataclysmic events and the planets aligning before they decided to upend their entire language
There have been cases where the offending kanji has just been replaced by hiragana. Itās not unusual to have kanji-hiragana combinations, so that would be an easy solution.
There was an episode of Japanese Ammo with Misa who mentioned that in a case I donāt fully remember. It may have been disability, where the ādamageā kanji is considered offensive and for that reason usually no longer written as kanji but in hiragana.
Iām clearing out this comment because this topic is cringe and I have no idea what possessed me to respond to it. I just had a tooth extracted and Iām not all here, not that Iām ever entirely here.
There was a lot of change and reform in Japanese in relatively recent past (last 150 years). Itās not like removal of kanji wasnāt discussed/proposed many times: Japanese script reform - Wikipedia . I personally doubt it will happen during my lifetime
Language is pretty fluid, so i would imagine that certain Kanji or words that people would feel are quite harmful/prejudicial would not be used quite so widely and this would be adopted by society in general as oposed to govermental change. For example, i have a few friends that do not use the word "å¤äŗŗā(ćććć) because it has negative conotations.
Yeah, I think major script reform depends on a combination of (a) it has to feel like a pressing issue (b) it has to be a time of major social and cultural upheaval also, where more radical voices get a hearing and the establishment (usually a force for conservatism and tradition and no-change) is weak. So Japanese got genbun itchi during the Meiji period, and kana spelling reform during the post-war occupation period, both of which were arguably long overdue changes. My guess is that absent any similarly major social disruption (fingers crossed!) we wonāt see anything more than fairly minor tweaks at most.
