Language Twitter: is there any language whose writing system is a greater disaster than Japanese? Since this is necessarily subjective, let's say by the definition of hours required for a fluent native speaker to master reading and writing.
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(For people not familiar, Japanese has two identical syllabaries, plus the roman alphabet, plus a few thousand required Chinese characters, each with multiple readings and unrecognizable calligraphic forms. It's a little rich)
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Replying to @evanburchard @Pinboard
those 100 kana can be learned like a week. It’s a drop in the kanji/hanzi bucket.
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Replying to @evanburchard
The thing about the kana that I like is that they demonstrate that the kanji are completely superfluous.
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Replying to @Pinboard @evanburchard
There are fewer characters but arguably the multiple readings make it harder to learn them. I'm sure someone has run the numbers!
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The question is, if you learned kana-only from childhood on, would it be as hard to read? (I'm not actually advocating for kanji abolition any more than English spelling reform. But as a thought experiment)
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