Ok so the form of written Chinese that the Japanese first attempted to emulate was a traditional literary style that had evolved from Old Chinese. This very concise form of writing used a system that was very beautiful and expressive, but lacked much clarity on pronunciation. In fact, by the time that the Japanese began adopting the habit of writing from the Chinese, spoken Chinese had changed so much that the vernacular language was no longer accurately represented (if it ever had been) by the literary written language based on Old Chinese. Pronunciation and grammar had changed to the point that a speaker of Old Chinese would likely be unable to effectively communicate with a speaker of Middle Chinese (the Chinese spoken during the Tang Dynasty when Japanese literacy became a thing)… though they still would have been able to communicate through Literary Chinese, because the writing had nothing to do with how the language was spoken.
To answer your question, the texts were indeed read aloud (and still are). In fact, there is a rhyme book conveniently called 韻書 that helped to give hints about the phonology of the texts. Initially, the texts were read with the pronunciation of Middle Chinese but slowly over time the pronunciations changed (and the rhyme book was updated) so that nowadays people just read them in Mandarin or whatever their local dialect is. So in essence, yes kanji were adopted into Japanese and given a Japanese sound equivalent to whatever Chinese sound was attached to the character at that time (since what was considered “Chinese” from dynasty to dynasty and from region to region varied quite a bit). But as you might imagine, in a system like this the sounds that the characters had attached to them were somewhat etherial. The language obviously has a phonetic interpretation, since people read it, but I would argue that Literary Chinese was not really intended to represent sounds or even an actual way of speaking. I’m not sure that there is evidence that Literary Chinese was actually meant to be said out loud at all. I’m of the mind that by the time the Japanese had started to learn the language, the Chinese themselves had forgotten that Literary Chinese was only meant for reading and had simply continued to use/read it simply because 900 years is a really long time and the Tang were just superimposing their own cultural practices on the dynasties of old.
Keep in mind that while some of what I’ve said is part of the scholarly canon, other parts are simply my ignorant point of view. So… you know, take what I’ve said with a grain of salt.
I actually think they should try to move away from it for a completely opposite reason. That’s because it seems to give a lot of Japanese people completely wrong ideas of how English is pronounced. From my experience in Japan, it seems that elementary school students study with more focus on correct pronunciation, but once they get into junior high and senior high, the focus just shifts to learning for exams, and they rely entirely on katakana pronunciations.
I randomly ran into lots of elementary school kids that could give me absolutely perfect, "Hello."s and "Thank you."s, but by the time you get to junior high students, everyone is throwing around awful "herro"s and "sank yuu"s. Yeah, a lot of it probably has to do with the focus on learning for entrance exams, and not actually speaking the language, but the reliance on katakana pronunciations seems to really hold them back.
It would be like learning French or Spanish and completely ignoring characters like Ç or Ñ, or not trying to understand the correct pronunciation of “eux” or double rr’s, and instead, above every word, there was a bad English approximation above it. I had three years of French in HS, and we focused on correct pronunciation every step of the way.
The use of katakana in Japanese and the improper teaching of phonetics are two entirely different things.
I don’t think what I posted is the opposite of what you were talking about. I said, does having that kanji version of computer help at all? Does that mean they’ll know English pronunciation? Of course not, it’s separate so there’s no reason for Japanese to drop loanwords.
You bring up pronunciation in language classes for English speakers… And act like we don’t anglicize loanwords when we speak English. It’s like saying we shouldn’t say “ka-RA-tee” in English because Japanese learners will say it wrong. That’s on the Japanese teachers to handle, not English speakers to change.
So in other words the problem is that the compounds imported are more likely homophones (because they are more concise and chosen for their poetic meaning) and not really used in spoken Chinese, and the kanji readings themselves are not the problem, right?
I’m not expecting perfection, this is not a peer reviewed journal or something When in doubt someone else who knows better will show up.
Too much focus on asking the “why” questions instead of just learning the language.
In general, trying to find out the reason is a good thing. For example, in science and engineering, you are encouraged to ask those questions because it helps comprehension.
In language learning, at some point even the experts who have PhD on the language sometimes don’t know the whole reason. It’s a complex mix of history, anthropology, linguistics, psychology, and other things.
When in doubt someone else who knows better will show up.