为什么韩国人和越南人已经不再使用汉字了，但日本人还守着不放呢

Why didn’t the Japanese get rid of Chinese characters while Koreans and Vietnamese did?

为什么韩国人和越南人已经不再使用汉字了，但日本人还守着不放呢？

以下是Quora网友的评论：

Christian Villarreal

The Japanese didn’t get rid of Chinese characters because it was a lot easier plain and simple. Also, the Koreans still use Chinese characters.

If you look at 橋 bridge, 端 end, and 箸chopsticks they all are pronounced as “hashi” but they all have different meanings.

With Vietnamese, they have different sounds and by hearing them you can tell the meaning.

日本人没有弃用汉字是因为汉字简单易懂。而且我要纠正一下，韩国人现在也还在使用汉字。

看看这几个字，橋bridge，端end和箸chopsticks，它们的读音都是“hashi”，但意思完全不同。

越南语有不同的发音，通过发音可以分辨出具体的意思。

With Korean (and I may be wrong with this) I don’t believe there are same sounding words, but if there are there are probably ways to tell the difference with the characters. Why you wouldn’t see Chinese characters a lot in Korea or much at all is because it is mostly used in things like medications and such but they still do use them.

至于韩语，我说的可能也不对，，我不相信韩语有同音字词，但如果有的话，可能也有方法用字符来区分。为什么汉字在韩国不多见，或者压根难觅踪影，是因为汉字主要用于药物等方面，但他们确实还在使用汉字。

The main reason that Japanese people didn’t get rid of Chinese characters is that then a lot of people would have to learn Japanese basically all over again and the leader of Japan would have to change a lot of text and such. It would basically be too hard to do so now.

(I also am studying Korean and want to learn Vietnamese. Just to inform you I may not be 100% correct but maybe 80–90%)

日本人没有弃用汉字的主要原因是，如果这么做，很多人就必须重新学习日语了，日本领导人也必须修改很多课本或诸如此类的文件，实施起来太难了。

(我自己也在学韩语，还想学越南语。我只想告诉你，我可能不是100%正确，但应该也说对了80-90%)。

Rokuro Sakotsu

When will Japan fully abandon the backward kanji?

is The kanji backward !?

Kanji is very useful.

They are made in such a way that you can understand the meaning even if you can't read them.

问：日本什么时候才能彻底抛弃落后的汉字？

答：汉字落后吗？

汉字可是太好用了。

汉字的造字方式真是绝了，即使你看不懂，也能理解它们的意思。

For example, “虫”. This means bug, insect, or worm.

And look at this.

例如“虫”字，意思是虫子、昆虫或蠕虫。

看看这个。

It contains the "虫" on the left side.

This will tell you that this is some kind of insect or a word related to it for now.

Kanji is functional, you know.

左边的偏旁包含了“虫”。

这就是告诉你，这是某种昆虫或某个与虫有关的字。

所以你知道了吧，汉字是非常实用的。

Eiji Takano（高野英二）

Since Japanese use Chinese characters, can they read Chinese writing?

I have received two comments about my past answers on Kanji.

问：既然日本人使用汉字，他们能读懂中文吗？

我看到2个网友对我曾经答过的关于汉字的问题做出了评论。

1) A Chinese Quoran and his friend had traveled in Japan. One of them had a toothache. They found a drug store but the pharmacist didn't understand English. They wrote 牙齿+疼痛 on paper. On the spot, the pharmacist understood and gave them a painkiller.

1) 有位中国网友和他的朋友去日本旅游。其中一人牙痛犯了，他们找到了一家药店，但是药剂师听不懂英语。他们在纸上写了牙齿+疼痛，药剂师当场就明白了，给了他们一片止痛药。

2) When a Japanese student went to China for study, Chinese faculties had an interesting experiment. They wrote Kanji/ Hanzi on paper and tried to communicate without talking. They were successful! Kanji worked like a powerful interpreter.

2) 有个日本学生去中国学习，中国老师做了一个有趣的实验。他们在纸上写汉字，想看看如果不说话能不能交流。他们做到了！汉字就像一个强大的翻译。

Conversation by Chinese and Japanese might be difficult for learners, but these examples proved that we can communicate by writing.

对学习者来说，汉语和日语对话可能很难，但这两个例子证明我们完全可以通过写作进行交流。

Minseop Leem

When Koreans can abandon Chinese characters, why can't the Japanese?

Here’s a chart that explains in a nutshell.

既然韩国人可以放弃汉字，为什么日本人不能？

下面这个图表可以简单地解释一下。

The first column has various words of Chinese origins. The rest columns show their pronunciations in East Asian languages.

2nd, 3rd, and 4th columns are respectively Standard Mandarin, Modern Cantonese, and Modern Korean. The last columns are Japanese, divided into Old Japanese (from the Nara period) and Modern Japanese (since the Edo period).

第一栏里有很多源于中国的字词，其余几列是这些字词的东亚语发音。

第2、3、4列分别为标准普通话、现代粤语和现代韩语。最后一栏是日语，分为古日语（奈良时代开始）和现代日语（江户时代开始）。

The stark contrast is visible from the numbers of different pronunciations in Mandarin/Cantonese/Korean versus Japanese - especially Modern Japanese in which every word is pronounced the same: koushou.

Lots of the words above are archaic, but some words are in daily use in modern Japanese, for example: 高声 ‘loud voice’, 考証 ‘historical evidence’, and 交渉 ‘to negotiate’.

从普通话、粤语、韩语和日语的发音数量就可以明显看出这种鲜明的对比，尤其是现代日语，每个单词的发音都是一样的：koushou。

上面的很多词都是古语，但有些词仍然出现在现代日语的日常使用中，例如：高声，考証，以及交渉等。

Now, imagine the Japanese have abandoned the use of Kanji and started to exclusively use Hiragana. The level of confusions from homonyms will be mind-blowing. And the difficulties in understanding written Japanese, whether you are a native Japanese or a foreigner learning the language, will be horrifying.

现在想象一下，如果日本人真的弃用汉字，只使用平假名的话，同音异义词的混淆问题会多得惊人。不管你是日本人还是学习日语的外国人，都难以理解书面日语。

Tsing Hsiung Ye

Why do the Japanese still widely use Chinese characters while Korean has thoroughly abandoned it?

This question has four sub-questions to answer.

为什么日本人还在广泛使用汉字，但韩国人已经彻底弃用了汉字？

要回答这个问题需要先回答四个子问题。

Why they adopted Chinese characters in the past?

In the past, Chinese civilization is dominant in east Asia, therefore, some concepts are only in Chinese, and due to the influence of Confucian culture, all scholars learn Chinese, and governmental scripts and history records were written in Chinese.

他们之前为什么采用了汉字？

历史上中华文明在东亚占据着主导地位，所以有些思想只有中文版本，由于儒家文化的影响，所有的学者都学习中文，政府文件和历史记录都用中文书写。

Why they abandoned Chinese?

Nationalism and education matters. Chinese characters are hard for Japanese and Koreans to learn, like Greeks invented alphabets to record ancient Egyptian characters. That makes education easier. And when Japan and Korea bloomed in economy, they felt confident in themselves so their national characters spread widely.

为什么他们弃用了中文？

这事关民族主义和教育。汉字对日本人和韩国人来说都很难学，就像希腊人发明了字母来记录古埃及文字一样，这么做降低了教育的难度。当日本和韩国实现了经济繁荣时，他们对自己的国家充满自信，因此他们国家的文字也得到了广泛传播。

What’s the present situation in Chinese character using?

Both Japan and Korea have voices to restore Chinese characters. In official documents, Chinese characters are widely used. Because there are many different Chinese words share a same pronounciation. If they use Hangul or hiragana to express, then there will be ambiguities. A famous example in Chinese is an article titled 施氏食狮史, every characters in this article, including the title, are prounouced as Shi, if we use pinyin to type in down, it will be Shi Shi Shi Shi Shi Shi…, similar examples exst in Japan and Korea.

目前汉字的使用情况如何？

日本和韩国国内都有恢复汉字使用的呼声。汉字在官方文件中得到了广泛使用。因为有许多不同的汉语词是同音词。如果用韩文或平假名来表达，就会出现歧义。中国有一篇题为施氏食狮史的文章就是很有名的例子，这篇文章中的每个字，包括标题，都发Shi的音，如果我们用拼音输入，就是Shi Shi Shi Shi…，日本和韩国也有类似的例子。

Do Koreans really roughly abandoned Chinese characters?

No, as another answer said, there are 2000 characters for Koreans to learn and use. In fact China, Japan and Korea had made a list of universal Chinese characters among three countries. They use their own characters just for writing easier, because sometimes they need time to recall what Chinese characters it is when writing but they can naturally write hanguls or hiraganas down.

韩国人真的弃用汉字了吗？

不，就像另一个回答里说到的那样，韩国人会学习并使用2000个汉字。事实上，中国、日本和韩国制定了一个三国通用的汉字清单。他们使用自己的文字只是为了方便书写，因为有时他们需要花不少时间来思考汉字怎么写，但写韩文或平假名就方便简单得多。

Hojai Jung

I could not agree with your comment that Korea has thoroughly abandoned it. Because still, most of the Korean young students are struggling to learn Chinese character. At least 2000 characters are recommended to study before graduating high-school in Korea. Chinese character's role in Eastasia is as similar to the Latin Language in Europe. If you knew a more Chinese character, you could better understand meaning and origin of the terms.

你说韩国已经彻底弃用汉字吗，我不同意这个说法。因为大多数韩国的年轻学生仍然在努力学习汉字。韩国学生在高中毕业前至少要学习2000个汉字。汉字在东亚的作用就类似于拉丁语在欧洲的作用。如果你认识的汉字越多，你就能越好地理解他们的含义和来源。

But, Korean Character is so easy to script especially in these computerized environments. Because Hangul is so easy and simple, younger generations are avoiding complex Chinese characters. Previous government (Military regimes) also had agreed on the abolishing Chinese Character from the Newspapers for raising Nationalism.

不过韩国的文字很好书写，尤其在计算机时代更是如此。

因为韩国字母表简单易懂，年轻一代对复杂的汉字敬而远之。以前的韩国政府（军事政权）因此同意禁止报章使用汉字来提升民族主义。

In conclusion, nowadays, the disputes about the education of Chinese character no more works in Korea. In order to exploit China's era, more students started to learn Chinese for themselves. But as you know, only mainland China are using simplified Chinese characters. All of other Asia (Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Hongkong, Singapore, etc) are still uing original characters. That is something difficult issue of it.

综上所述，如今韩国已经不再关注汉字教育的争论。越来越多的学生看好中国的发展，开始自己学习汉语。但如你所知，只有中国大陆使用简体汉字。亚洲其他地区（中国台湾、韩国、日本、中国香港、新加坡等）使用的都是繁体字。这也是一个难点。

Isaac Hsu

Originally Answered: Why the Japanese did not get rid of Chinese characters while Koreans and Vietnamese did?

I think for three main reasons.

我认为主要有三个原因。

The elites who would make these decisions are educated men. And going all the way back to Nara period, educated men know kanjis. It’s what separates them from the poorly educated masses. Thus, these learned men have no incentives to lower themselves to the level of everyone else by eliminating what gives them their status.

做决策的精英都是受过良好教育的人。从奈良时代开始，受过教育的男人都要懂汉字。这就是他们和受教育程度低的普罗大众的区别。所以这些知识分子没有动机来废除赋予他们地位的东西，拉低自己的水平。

Up to 80% of the Japanese vocabulary is derived from Sino-based lexcons. (See my write up Isaac Hsu's answer to If Chinese characters (Kanji) had never been introduced into Japan, what would the Japanese language and writing system be like now?) Because of this historical path of adopting Chinese lexcon & writing, it’s basically impossible to separate/eliminate the Sino elements now - without creating a new language that is very different from modern Japanese.

Finally, I’ve found many Japanese either forget or don’t know that kanjis came from China. They associate Kanjis - along with many other cultural imports from China (e.g. chopsticks, natto, miso, soy sauce, etc) - as of Japanese origin. It’s been part of their language for so long, they don’t view it as foreign and thus don’t question the need to eliminate it from their language.

有高达80%的日语词汇源于汉语词汇。(请参阅Isaac Hsu的回答：如果汉字从未被引入日本，日本的语言和书写系统现在会是什么样子？)

由于采用汉语词汇和汉字书写的历史传播，现在已经不太可能分离/消除这些汉字元素了——除非再创造一门与现代日语截然不同的新语言。

最后，我发现许多日本人要么忘记了，要么压根不知道日本汉字就源于中国。他们把日本汉字和许多其他从中国输入的文化（如筷子、纳豆、味噌、酱油等）混在一起，误以为它们源于日本。日本汉字很早就融入了他们的语言，他们没有把它当做舶来品，也从未想过要把它从他们的语言中剔除。

Updated 3/4: As Mike Takuki Wu correctly pointed out in his comment, Chinese characters & vocabulary are akin to the Roman letters & Latin of East Asian countries. It’s been part of their language and culture for centuries and does not feel foreign.

Mike Takuki Wu在他的评论中准确地指出，汉字和汉语词汇类似于东亚国家的罗马字母和拉丁语。几个世纪以来一直是他们语言和文化的一部分。

Jim White

Why do Japanese keep using Chinese characters while Korean and Vietnamese created their own characters?

Number one, Koreans have not fully abandoned Chinese characters. It’s still a requirement for Koreans students and it’s required if you want to learn Korean at an advanced level to expand your vocabulary.

Vietnam was colonized by the French, which they banned the use of Chu Non and Han tu, and it made Vietnam easier (since it was tonal.) They use the LATIN SCRIPT.

为什么日本人一直在使用汉字，而韩国和越南人却创造了自己的文字？

首先，韩国人并没有完全弃用汉字。对于韩国学生来说，汉字仍然是必学内容，如果你想学习高级水平的韩语，就必须通过汉字来扩大你的词汇量。

越南曾经是法国殖民地，禁止使用表音文字chu nom和Han tu，降低了越南语的难度（因为越南语有带声调的）。越南人使用拉丁文字。