the chaos in Japanese is the highest I have encountered in terms of the written to speech.
So, you haven’t met tibetan script yet 
Usually languages go through an important orthographic reform to adopt writing to speech every x decades, or maybe every one or two centuries.
But the last reform in tibetan was something like 2800 years ago.
And, speaking of Japanese, it was way more “chaotic” at the begining of the 20th century, with 今日 spelt けふ (yet pronounced キョー）、言う speIt いふ etc
That’s a really good rebuttal, I learned a good bit from your comment. I was just pulling the readings from WK but yeah you’re right あ and がっ would not be possible readings or make any sense. That would be a mistake you’d only make like I did by not being experienced. That does undermine my point by cutting the possible readings in half from 12 to 6, but on the other hand there’s still 6. And that seems to be the case with most vocab, you’ve got lots of possible readings that aren’t entirely illogical. Would you agree that to some extent between the possible readings, it is just arbitrary (or the underlying logic isn’t very clear or helpful) and just requires brute force memorization? What makes it have to be しあい, how do you get there without just knowing that’s the correct answer?
I cannot speak for @Fishing , but I can relate to feeling overwhelmed with the sheer complexity of Japanese. However the more I study it, the more I find that following @defatihkilic ‘s approach is what will help me in my learning journey: embrace the language as it is without judgement and enjoy the challenge 
It can definitely feel overwhelming at times, but at the end of the day the complexity and challenge is why I (and I think many of us) chose Japanese. As @defatihkilic said, it makes the language interesting and a big accomplishment to learn. I agree completely, I think it is objectively complex, not just from the perspective of an English speaker but objectively compared to most/all other languages due to the unique way it evolved. As others have explained, there is order mixed in with the chaos that is helpful and makes it fun to learn. Perhaps it seems like I am being critical of the language (not that you’re accusing me of that), but I’ve merely been demonstrating how Japanese is a deeply complex language, which is not necessarily a “good” or “bad” thing. Different languages evolved to serve different purposes, at different times, in different conditions.
Japanese is not “wrong” in the way that it evolved, and I would never claim that it should be different or that it is inferior to other languages. For example, I would never claim that Japanese should’ve turned into an alphabet based language like Hangeul. That would require erasing millennia of history, tradition, etc., and the Japanese decided that they did not want to do that and I respect that decision completely. However, the idea that it is racist to state that Japanese is very complex is not something I think I even need to respond to.
I don’t think “Japanese is complex” is a racist claim, to be clear.
I dont think its wrong to call it a make shift language. I think all languages are actually make shift languages. I have yet to encounter a language that is properly pure other than in academic-computer contexts and those are abysmal to use.
Borrowed words, exceptions, idioms (language within a language), double meanings, culturally backed meanings. I am missing aspects.
Knowing it is しあい and not other thing isn’t different from knowing that it is “waterproof” and not “hydroproof”, or “aquaproof”. An English learner could misremember the word and say “hydroproof” for example. And while it is not the correct word, most people would still understand and recognize what was the real word intended.
Yes, when you see a writing that intends to note sounds, you may approach the right pronunciation, yet not know its meaning at all.
With a writing system intended to note primarily meaning, is the other way, you may get the meaning without knowing the pronunciation.
In both cases you fully know the word (meaning, sound, written image) only when you… fully know the word.
That’s just recalling a word from memory, the writing system is irrelevant in that case. You can be mistaken about the proper word to use in any language, even your own native language. But that’s completely different from reading. If you saw the word “waterproof,” you would never think it might be read as hydroproof. From what I’ve heard, even for native Japanese, if you see a name in Japanese, there is a high likelihood you don’t know the reading they use. Not just the exact pronunciation of the reading, which may occasionally be a problem in English, but which reading to use itself. That’s a complexity exclusive to Japanese.
Fair point about the system intended to note meaning. One of the many cool things about Japanese.
Well, once you master any language, you know it. But we’re talking about the bridge to getting to knowing it. Japanese has a disconnect between written image and sound. Written image (mostly) doesn’t help you know sound, and sound doesn’t help you know written image. Unlike in English where one directly connects to another. That inherently makes Japanese require more brute force memorization to fully know the word compared to really any other language. Radicals and mnemonics are evidence of that, but that’s not just a result of learning Japanese from English. A Japanese child still has to intentionally memorize thousands of Kanji. In English, after you learn the alphabet you begin to learn words passively.
Great input - thank you for putting in the effort to teach us something new.
I also would agree that all languages are make-shift! As I said previously, I don’t think there is any evidence that Japanese is more or less make-shift than any other human language.
Saying something is “the most make-shift” reminds me of the kinds of racist, eurocentric standards that vaunted the achievements of Europe while denying those of other places. It would be like arguing, for example, that because Native architecture in North America used materials like woof and animal hides (and because Native settlements were systematically wiped out by settlers), that Native architecture had no achievements, was primitive, and needed the light and guidance of the west—all ideas that were held during the settling of North America and used to justify genocide and the theft of Native land.
I’m sure that you don’t intend any of this by your remarks @Fishing, and I’m sorry to be annoying in this thread; I’ll step away now. I am just surprised to be so repeatedly misunderstood.
Alphabetic scripts may be easier to guess the sound of an unknown word (but it is far from straightforward, there are plenty of cases where if you don’t know the word you don’t know the proper pronunciation either), but even guessing the right sound won’t make an unknown word known. That is what dictionaries are for.
There isn’t any fundamental difference between English and Japanese (or Chinese) in that. The difference is that instead of searching in a dictionary by alphabetic order of letters (note: you don’t search by sound, it may be hard to find an unknown English word you heard without seeing its spelling), you search in a dictionary by kanji classification (radical, number of strokes, shape) - or, on tactical input electronic devices you can just write the unknown word with your finger, even easier.
Actually searching by kanji is quite easy once you are acostumed to it.
I often use the dictionary. A couple of days ago I wanted to use the word 爪, I knew the meaning and writing, but wasn’t sure of the sound - and it was for an oral presentation -, so I looked it up.
I also read in a book 棲んでいる, it had furigana, so I saw it was すんでいる、but wasn’t sure of the meaning (after all, if it was written with 棲 instead of 住 there may be a reason), so I looked it up.
Then there are people’s (or places) names… that is indeed an upper level, and usually they are not in general use language dictionaries. But on our age we are quite lucky, so I searched in internet for 新美南吉 and got not only the sound of his name but also information on his life. Now, if I saw his name again, I know how to read it, because I know whom he is.
It seems from your messages that you think being able to said correct sound for unknown words is the same as “reading”.
I know another language, for which there is an ongoing heated debate on how to write it. There is one side that says the writing must reflect closely the sound (which leads to writing fragmentation due to dialect variations, and in the end greatly reduces the geographical spanning a written text may cover). And another side that says the language being the same, the spelling should be the same (which leads to the reading or writing of unknown words not being directly guessable, but had the advantage to maximize the audience of a given text).
I once asked one of the proponents of the first way what he thinks would be better, a foreigner being able to utter the correct sounds, with no idea of what those sounds mean; or a native going to the trouble learning writing rules but being able to write to, and read from, all people knowing those rules, regardless of oral, accent and dialect variations.
He explicitly told me the first option was desirable, which for me means he doesn’t see that language as a tool for communication (and, indeed, he usually uses another, different, language to communicate, even with natives. He only uses the native language for writing poetry for a small local audience).
That language uses, in both cases, a roman alphabet. So, that dichotomy exists even for alphabetic languages. A logographic writing just makes it more visible (pun intended).
thousands of kanji
Kanji are not like letters (kana are).
Kanji are made of components. Kanji are lique words, and components like letters.
even seeing 棲 for the first time, it is easy to look up, as I can see 「木妻」、「木一ヨl女」、「一lノ\一ヨlくノ一」
There is even an alphabetic script that groups letters on kanji-shaped sillabe clusters. While there are thousands of such hangeul clusters, the set of letters is actually limited (around 30 iirc)
yeah by my count there are 24 components of hangeul, 10 of which are vowels. a valid hangeul “syllable” has three basic slots “consonant-vowel-consonant”.
in South Korean orthography (apparently, still following that wikipedia link) there are
So, there are 19 * 21 * 28 = 11,172 possible “single-kanji”-esque combinations in South Korean orthography. I’d bet that’s in same the ballpark as the number of existing single-syllable words in English.
It’s interesting to note that Japanese has one or two orders of magnitude fewer possibilities, even allowing two-mora-but-one-consonant combinations like じゅう, はい or じゃん.