I agree with all the statements by the author in this article. However, I only need one reason to learn kanji: being able to read!

Most the stuff in this article has been said before, but it's nice to see it all in one place. Will def. be forwarding inquisitive young minds to your post

There's really only one reason to learn kanji: because otherwise, you CAN'T READ ANYTHING!

Let's keep it simple.

Practicality aside, I like kanji for their aesthetics also. That said, I also have a love-hate relationship with the vile temptresses. Curse their curvaceous wiles!

Yay kanji! Also useful for impressing Japanese people if you are a foreigner >_

Could someone write an article on how writing sentences using pictographs really isn't such a wonderful thing at all? What is this love that foreigners have for kanji - they're just pictures dammit, and they're incredibly inefficient and far too complex as a writing system.

We should get rid of all brand logos as well, since they are hard to remember and new ones come out all the time.
How do you remember the 'swoosh' stands for Nike and the 3 stripes stands for adidas? There is not a lot of difference between these brand symbols, kanji and basic hieroglyphics.

Kanji enhances the Japanese language, not detracts from it.

The Koreans would certainly agree with you (Frugalista):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul#History

"...they're incredibly inefficient and far too complex as a writing system."

You could say the same thing of English vocabulary spellings and grammar as well. Talk about inefficient!

But this really isn't a debate on efficiency, is it. Korean is, perhaps, one of the most efficient languages in the world in terms of writing (I love it more than Japanese, and I love Japanese a lot!), yet there are still people who complain about trying to read in "sticks and circles". What this is really about is leaving your comfort zone and communicating in a way that is at first foreign to you, and I'd much prefer optimistic outlooks on language than fruitless whinging.

shibuya - I totally agree with you - Written Japanese is impossible without Kanji. That doesn't justify Kanji though, it simply shows the inadequacies of the Japanese language at it's core.

CJW and Alex - Interesting, I've never thought about Hangul and never had a reason to learn Korean. I certainly wouldn't complain about writing in sticks and circles though, since every letter of any language is just basic geometric shapes.

There's nothing foreign about Japanese to me. I'll admit I'm no kanji master but I think, dream and communicate daily in solely Japanese. It's with that in mind that I criticize it as a language; and I truly believe that over time one language will come to dominate. I won't say that will be English, because it may not be. I know it won't be Japanese though. Or Chinese, for that matter. Maybe it will be Spanish as one commenter on the site seems to believe that's the best language.

ps: Brand symbols are entirely different. I'm talking about using pictographs in text, not on their own. Feel free to make a kanji into a logo, as that's about all they're good for.

I used to hate kanji, thinking the same way about why the Japanese would use complex Chinese characters in writing, even today. It is true Koreans dropped Chinese characters in favour of simple hangul syllables, but I think most of the languages always have that archaic feature that takes time for people to appreciate.

In French, for example, I used to hate all the dozen possible conjugations for verbs, but came to like the variants that are at my disposition. As for the Chinese characters used in Japanese, sure, I didn't want to start learning them. Although, funny enough, thanks to radicals and other properties, the more you learn kanji, the easier it gets. I then began to like the characteristics of kanji, like its writing, style, readings, etc.

Everybody likes kanji when you believe in them.

I suppose Japanese could be written in only hiragana, if spaces were added between words and it was written as it is spoken. Doing that would largely overcome the problems that one would have if all kanji were suddenly pulled out of a newspaper article for example. There would still be homophones, of course, but context should make that clear.

That said, what would be the point? Sure, it might make reading and writing Japanese easier for those of us who started learning when we were adults, but is there any clear benefit to the natives? I am reminded of an old (1900s) book on Japan I read years ago where the author blasted written Japanese for being "archaic", "overly complex" and a bunch of other things, and said Japanese would be much better served by simply adopting the eminently sensible Roman alphabet (even though in some ways it is no more suited to Japanese than Chinese characters are). Translation: "I can't get my head around it, therefore it is too difficult so why don't you do things my way!"

"and I truly believe that over time one language will come to dominate."
They used to say that about Greek, and then Latin, and then French, now English... but none of those led to the death of any other major languages now did they? I just don't see any one language ever becoming anything more than a widely-spoken second language. I mean, look at Holland for example: damn near everyone speaks English, and at a very high level, English movies and TV shows are shown without subtitles because no-one needs them, and yet they still speak Dutch.

"Maybe it will be Spanish as one commenter on the site seems to believe that's the best language."
I like Spanish, but if anyone thinks kanji are difficult (and is not a native Spanish or other Latin-root language speaker) then they sure aren't going to be able to wrap their minds around a language with 6 verb forms (OK, most Spanish speakers only use 5, but the 6th still exists...) for any given tense depending on who/what the subject of the verb is, plus nouns are all either male or female with no apparent rule as to which is which, they have to be learned largely case-by-case, and the noun's gender then affects which particles you can and can't use.

Not to mention even native Spanish speakers can't agree on how to speak the language. Depending on where you are, "Give me a cold beer" could be:
Dame una cerveza con fria
Dame una cerveza con frio
Dame una cerveza fria
Dame una cerveza frio

Or, "ropa limpia" is either your laundry or a rag for wiping tables, depending where the speaker is from.

The point is, every language has its quirks, and native speakers of that language often don't even think of them as quirks unless they are pointed out, and sometimes not even then. Just listen to George Carlin's bits about English - he was dead-on.

"Why do we say 'take a shit'? You don't take shits, you leave them!"

Even in Korea, there is still a need for kanji in order to understand all the Chinese-derived terms in the language--see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanja

I don't think kanji are going away so long as Japanese remains so extensively influenced by Chinese vocabulary.

Well, if you're gonna quote George Carlin I have no choice but to admit defeat...

Although I would say that the evidence for languages dying out is quite clear. Perhaps there only being one left is a little drastic; but I can see a situation where there only 4 or maybe 5are left in the whole world. Didn't the last speaker of some ancient chinese dialect die a month or so ago? A lot of aboriginal languages are dead now too.

As for Latin and Greek, I wouldn't say they died at all - in fact they evolved, or merged into English... which is exactly what could foreseeably happen in the future, couldn't it? Let's say China invades Japan and eventually Japanese language dies out... It's not so strange a prediction is it?

And one last point - if Kanji are so wonderful then why doesn't Japan and China use them for new words - like make up new Kanji? Japan just reverts to Katakana, and god knows how many new words will be entering in the next few years until 50% of any sentence is actually just bastardized English; and China is pretty much the same but to a lesser degree* uses Kanji to phonetically sound out a word rather than kana, with the result being even harder to understand than katakana!

(*Computer is Chinese for example is "electronic brain", while whiskey is sounded phonetically using totally irrelevant characters).

ps: Where I'm from, it's common to say "need a shit" where the verb is left out, or "have a shit" in the same way we would say "have dinner" or "have a haircut"... Taking shits is just weird.

Japan did make up new kanji in the past. è¾», for example.

You could use the same argument for "futon", "karaoke", and "sushi", though. We live in an age of information where words are absorbed instead of created. If conditions are perfect (and they won't be), the best we could hope for is a sort of language salad that becomes universal. It won't ever happen, because can you imagine trying to fuse the grammars of two completely different languages? On top of that, you need to take into consideration ethnic identities that won't tolerate abandoning their linguistic heritage. It's not just about ideal linguistics.

Frugalista, Japanese used to use kanji for foreign words as well. It still does at times. Check your beer labels for the word 麦酒, which is not read "mugi-shuu" but rather "biiru."

Another example, this time phonetic, is "tempura," which is often written 天ぷら or, less commonly, 天麩羅. It may be heavenly but that isn't how it got the name!

Also 珈琲, which you'll still see used often.

there are some pretty handy mnemonic books out there for remembering meanings in kanji, like Kanji Pict-o-Graphix. I found them pretty useful!