Can Japanese people read Chinese?

日本人能读懂中文吗？

以下是Quora网友的评论：

Scytheria

This is a vaguely loaded question. It suggests that the writing system known as “Chinese characters” is an invention that belongs to the country known as “China” and that anybody else who can read or write them is somehow borrowing, stealing or appropriating them. I often hear Chinese people stating that Japan, Korea and Vietnam all ‘took’ writing from China, with the implication being that China is somehow better, cleverer, more advanced, etc. as a result.

这个问题有些含糊其辞了。它似乎想让我们觉得“汉字”这种文字体系是“中国”的发明，所有会读或会写“汉字”的人都以某种方式借用、窃取或挪用了这些文字。我经常听到中国人说，日本、韩国和越南都借用了中国的“汉字”，所以中国在某种程度上比这些国家更优秀、更聪明、更先进等等。

The fact is, the writing system was invented and developed SOMEWHERE in the Asia-Pacific region. Nobody knows where. Modern China has adapted the system in its own fashion (simplifying thousands of characters). Japan has pruned the number of characters used, changed a few and added two different alphabetic scripts. Korea and Vietnam have dropped the system altogether to adopt completely alphabetic ones.

事实上，这种文字体系是在亚太地区的某个地方发明和演变的。没人知道具体是在哪儿。现代中国以自己的方式调整了汉字体系（简化了数千个汉字）。日本削减了汉字的使用数量，改变了一些字形，同时还增加了两种不同的字母系统。韩国和越南已经完全弃用了汉字系统，完全采纳了字母系统。

So - Can Japanese people read Chinese? Some can - those who have learned Chinese. Can Chinese people read Japanese? Some can - those who have learned Japanese. Are there similar elements in written Chinese and Japanese? Yes, they have a common ancestry. Are those elements “Chinese”? No, they are the cultural/historical property of a large Asia-Pacific region.

那么回到你的问题，日本人能读懂中文吗？有些人是可以的—学过中文的人。中国人能读懂日文吗？有些人是可以的—那些学过日文的人。中文和日文有相似之处吗？是的，他们有共同的起源。这些元素是“中国”特有的吗？不，它们只是庞大的亚太文化/历史财产的一部分。

George Arno

If it’s traditional Chinese writing (i.e. as used on Taiwan), yes, they can read some of it.

If it’s simplified Chinese writing (i.e. as used in mainland China), no they mostly cannot read it.

如果是繁体字(台湾地区目前仍在使用的)，是的，他们可以读懂一些。

如果是简体字(中国大陆目前使用的)，不，他们基本上都读不懂。

苏 陈

Many older Japanese people can roughly read classical Chinese. In general, Japanese are more likely to read classical Chinese than modern Chinese texts

许多上了年纪的日本人都能大致读懂文言文。一般来说，日本人更喜欢阅读文言文而不是现代中文。

Hajime Suzuki

We as Japanese people do not know how to pronounce them in Chinese except we have learnt Chinese.

But, in terms of understanding, we can read Chinese because each Chinese character has a meaning.

我们日本人不知道怎么用中文发音，除非我们刻意学习过。

但是，在理解方面，我们是可以看得懂汉字的，因为每个汉字都代表着一个意思。

NEKO (Chibineko Suwano)

No.

I’ve been in Shenzhen for 3 yrs+, but still can’t understand Chinese well.

不能。

我已经在深圳生活3年多了，但还是看不太懂中文。

Hantani Sadahiko

Actually, Japanese learn ancient Chinese in high school.

This is the ancient Chinese textbook used in Japan.

事实上，日本人在高中是要学习古汉语的。

这是日本使用的古汉语教科书。

Japanese can read ancient Chinese.

The reason I can't read modern Chinese is very simple.

Chinese can't read because they changed the Chinese characters. Taiwanese Chinese characters are old Chinese characters, so I can read them.

The Japanese can read 「學」「廣」「醫」.

Japanese people cannot read 「说」「广」「个」.

日本人能读懂古汉语。

但我读不懂现代汉语的原因很简单。

因为他们改变了汉字的字形。台弯地区使用的汉字还是旧时的汉字，所以我能看得懂。

日本人可以读“學”“廣”“醫”这种繁体字。

但日本人看不懂“说”“广”“个”这种简体字。

Prabhuti Vashisth

Japanese claim that they can read Chinese, but the truth is that they can only pick out the nouns and verbs in a sentence, so they understand the topic and general gist of most written text, especially from Taiwan.

However, since adverbs and adjectives are also written in characters, Japanese can’t figure that part out. Equally important, Chinese grammar is so much closer to the SVO pattern of English that it’s much too confusing to most Japanese. Most of it ends up being guesswork, piecing together the recognizable nouns and verbs.

日本人总说他们能读得懂汉字，但事实是他们只能看懂一个句子中的名词和动词，所以他们可以理解大多数文本中的主题和大意，尤其是台湾地区的文本。

但因为副词和形容词也是汉字，日本人无法理解这一点。还有一点很重要，汉语的语法与英语的SVO模式非常接近，大多数日本人都感到十分困惑。大部分都是靠猜，和看得懂的名词和动词拼凑在一起。

Of course, some simplified Chinese characters from mainland China and Singapore are quite unrecognizable. I suppose the youngest generation in Japan may now even fail to recognize a lot of really complex traditional characters, as well, and they’ve become quite lazy in recognizing a lot of characters that they’re supposed to know.

One would think that adverbs and adjectives aren’t really significant in a sentence, but when all you know is Japanese, you soon discover how many adverbs are central to Chinese sentences and are crucial for understanding Mandarin. Another big problem is that so many character combinations can act as either a noun or a verb, so that makes things even worse for Japanese readers of Chinese if they don’t know Mandarin or Cantonese.

当然了，中国大陆和新加坡的部分简体字很难看懂。我感觉现在日本最年轻的一代可能连复杂些的繁体字都认不出来了，而且他们很懒，不愿意去认那些他们应该知道的汉字。

有人会认为句子中的副词和形容词并不重要，但当你只知道日语时，你很快就会发现很多副词是汉语句子中的关键信息，对理解这句汉语至关重要。另外还有一个大问题，很多汉字组合既可以用作名词，也可以用作动词，因此，如果日本读者不懂普通话或粤语，情况就会更糟。

In the 1990s, when I was quite fluent in reading both Japanese and Chinese, I’d ask Japanese tourists to Canada whether they could tell me the meaning of the Taiwanese text I was reading. They’d claim the could, but then, they could only point out the very general topic and not really what was happening in it.

上世纪90年代，当我能够流利地阅读日语和汉语时，我会请教在加拿大旅游的日本游客，能不能跟我说说我阅读的台湾文章的意思。他们说可以，但也只能说得非常笼统，没办法真正说清楚文章中究竟说了些什么。

Despite my own background in both languages, I find Hong Kong newspapers unreadable, except in the same sense of picking out the general meaning. So many Cantonese speakers claim that the written version is identical to Mandarin, but it’s just not true. Too many words are different, and the grammar in Hong Kong newspapers really does look different from what’s used in Taiwan and China. I did eventually learn simplified characters as well in the latter half of the 1990s but still prefer the meaning-filled traditional characters.

虽然我自己有双语背景，但我发现香港的报纸很难读懂，我只能蒙出大概的意思。许多讲粤语的人说，书面文字和普通话完全相同，但事实并非如此。太多词都完全不同，香港报纸上的语法也跟台湾地区和中国大陆不同。上个世纪90年代后期，我终于学会了简体字，但我还是更喜欢充满意义的繁体字。

Aakash Sharma

Japanese people can obviously not read chinese but can get the gist out of the sentence.

Japanese has 3 scripts, namely;

1)Hiragana

2)Katakana

3)Kanji

日本人显然是读不懂中文的，但他们可以读懂句子的大意。

日语有三种文字，即:

1) 平假名

2) 片假名

3) 日本汉字

Hiragana and Katakana originated in Japan but Kanji came all the way from China.

(i drink water)

(chinese)我喝水- Wǒ hē shuǐ

(japanese)私は水を飲む- watashi wa mizu wo nomu

平假名和片假名起源于日本，而日本汉字则源于中国。

(我喝水)

(中文)我喝水- Wǒ hē shuǐ

(日语)私は水を飲む- watashi wa mizu wo nomu

The word written in bold above is a “kanji"(literally meaning chinese letters) of water. Both japanese and chinese use this very symbol or kanji to represent water.

In chinese this symbol is called shuǐ in japanese its called mizu.

Therefore a japanese who doesn't knows chinese pronuntion will kind of know that this sentence revolves around water but theres no way he/she/other can read it like that of a chinese.

上面用粗体字表示的是“日本汉字”(字面意思就是汉字)中的水。日本人和中国人都用这个符号或汉字来代表水。

在中文中，这个字被称为shuǐ，在日语中被称为mizu。

因此，一个不懂中文发音的日本人会知道这个句子是跟水有关的，但他/她/其他人不可能像中国人一样读出来。

Rose Queen

I know japanese people used much kanji (chinese words) in their language.. but the chinese and the japanese usually cannot speak or write each other languages ..

我知道日本人在他们的语言中使用了很多汉字。但是中国人和日本人通常都不会说、也不会写对方的语言。

Akom Seni

What you are wondering is whether a Japanese who has managed to learn all the 2,000 kanji is able to read Chinese.

Well, only to a little extent. It is simple to explain.

你想知道的是，一个学过2000个日本汉字的日本人能否读得懂中文。

嗯，只能说在一定程度上可以。这很好解释。

First and the most obvious, the Chinese use more kanji or characters than the Japanese. Hence, for this argument, suppose the Chinese use 4,000 kanji as against the 2,000 in the case of Japanese. Then there would be a 2 to 1 chance that a Japanese person may not recognize what appears in the Chinese writing.

首先，也是最明显的一点，中国人比日本人使用的汉字更多。因此，假设中国人使用4000个汉字，日本人使用2000个汉字。那么日本人有50%的几率认不出中文书写的内容。

Second, when the Japanese study kanji, they learn how to use it ONLY in conjunction with hiragana and katakana. This means these kanji words either lead a full sentence or get sandwiched in between hiragana and katakana words in a typical Japanese sentence. Therefore, if all the hiragana and katakana words in such a sentence are removed, the remaining kanji words would not be able to deliver the full meaning of the original sentence and would only make partial sense.

第二，日本人学习日本汉字时，他们只学习如何将它与平假名和片假名结合来使用。这意味着在一个典型的日语句子中，这些日本汉字要么是句子的开头，要么被夹在平假名和片假名之间。因此，如果去掉这句话中所有的平假名和片假名词汇，剩下的日本汉字就无法表达原句的全部意思，只能表示部分意义。

Now, to a typical Chinese sentence where everything is in kanji. Based on the fact mentioned above, what are the chances of a Japanese person understanding it?

The chances are 50% or much less.

现在来看一个典型的中文句子，所有内容都用汉字来表示。基于上述事实，你觉得日本人读懂这个句子的机会有多大？

概率只有50%或者更低。

Jamie Farley

Japanese Kanji is based on Logograms the same as the Chinese characters. The characters can be broken down further into radicals that have more basic meanings.

Japanese people can sometimes u understand the concepts of the Chinese written language but stray from the point a little.

The chinese written characters are pronounced differently by Chinese people than they are read by Japanese people.

Japanese Kanji characters already have 2 different ways of reading them.

日本汉字和中国汉字一样是基于语标符号的。汉字可以进一步分解为具有更基本含义的部首。

日本人有时能理解中国书面语言的概念，但多少会有点偏离主题。

中国人读汉字的发音和日本人读汉字的发音完全不同。

日本汉字已经有了两种不同的阅读方式了。

Stephen Benfey

Not anymore. Educated Japanese used to be able to read and write classical Chinese by using transcription rules to rearrange the order of the characters and tack on Japanese endings. This is called yomikudashibun. 読み下し文. Japanese students are still taught the basics of this process but it is not much use for making sense of modern Chinese, at least not modern Mandarin 普通话.　

Classical Chinese was the standard for all official documents and correspondence (between men, mainly, since women were expected to write in kana syllabary) until the end of the Tokugawa or Edo period and the begng of the Meiji era in 1868. The situation was similar to that of Latin in Europe. Think about why all Western European languages are written in adaptations of the Roman alphabet, despite its unsuitability to representing languages such as Polish and English.

现在不行了。过去，受过教育的日本人能够通过转录规则重新排列汉字的顺序、添加日语结尾来读写文言文。这叫做转译。読み下し文。日本学生现在还要学习转译的基础知识，但这对理解现代汉语并没有多大用处，至少对理解普通话没有用处。

直到德川、江户时代的结束、1868年明治时代的开始之时，文言文一直是官方文件和通信的标准语体(主要是在男性之间，因为当时认为女性应该用假名音节来书写)。这种情况与拉丁语在欧洲的情况类似。想想看，虽然罗马字母并不适合表示波兰语和英语等语言，但为什么所有西欧语言都是用罗马字母衍生出来的呢。