English spelling is a mishmash of various origins. That’s why there are spelling bee competitions in English-speaking countries, and almost none in other countries.
Fair point, English is far harder to spell correctly than Japanese. Japanese appears to be very logical; how it sounds is how it spells.
Still, I don’t agree with OP saying kanji is easier to understand than the English alphabet. But
he/she will find out that later on.
The latin alphabet is not hard to master, but it can be hard to apply in english. Lots of mishmashed sounds and silent letters throught the language. Still trips me up sometimes.
I still think english is easier in general, but not really for the alphabet.
Or have dyslexia
I just want to add that this kind of teaching is definitely not the norm here lol, at least not in my generation.
OTOH, I find it hard to argue that Kanji are “more logical”. You might argue this for Chinese Hanzi, but the problem with Kanji is that they were a Chinese import and not “custom made” for Japanese.
There are unfortunately teachers in all corners of the world who teach that their own culture is superior to other cultures. Is it so surprising that we’re seeing the rise of fascism again lately?
A big difference in the latin alphabet and kanji/hanzi is the number of strokes each character has. Of course you can relay more information if you use more strokes. That’s what makes reading chinese characters so much faster and easier to comprehend, but on the other hand it makes it way harder to write (clearly). Furthermore, having a lower number of commonly used syllables results in many words having the same writing and only differentiating in the pronounciation (homonyms or 同音異義語/どうおんいぎご - a word you actually learn on wanikani). Therefore I wouldn’t say that easier languages are automatically better/worse since complexity and expressiveness are two sides of the same coin.
Oh, you didn’t have to sing “Negeraufstand ist in Kuba” in a choir?
Lucky you.
I actually had a teacher in third grade who taught us a song that is, for modern ears, quite offensive. But he rewrote the lyrics so it wasn’t offensive anymore and he discussed with us why exactly the original lyrics were problematic.
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.