AHC/WI: Japan Replaces Kanji with Latin or Cyrillic Script

Delta Force

Banned
I'm thinking of this occurring sometime during the Meiji Era, but earlier is okay too. Historically, Vietnamese used Chinese characters, but it moved to the Latin script in the late 1800s and early 1900s with the encouragement of both French colonial administrators and eventually Vietnamese nationalists, who felt it would help improve literacy and promote Vietnamese independence. The idea of adopting a Western script for Japanese has occasionally been brought up over the years within Japan as a means of simplifying the process of learning the language. Could such a change take place, and what would the impact be for Japan and the Japanese language?
 

Deleted member 67076

I cannot comment on the plausibility, however going on the experiences of the new world states, the farther back you go the more likely it is for the Spanish/Portuguese/Italians to do the initial translation. What this entails is that romanization will be a different than it would be today, mostly in the spelling.

The most obvious one would be that the letters 'c' and 'x' would be everywhere, representing the hard C and 'sh' sound respectively, as was common for the Iberians. (the latter especially. "X" was used as the stand in for "SH" when the Spaniards wrote about the Meshica tribe; hence Mexico.) 'Z' would be similarly rare, probably just replaced with 's'.

K would be pretty much nonexistant in Japanese romanization. Spanish and Latin hate that letter.

So you'd get things like Tocio instead of Tokyo, Conata instead of Konata, or Sushi, as 'Suxi'.
 
It seems unlikely that Japan would abandon it's writing system unless it was forced upon it by an occupying or colonial force. The best bet for this is probably a longer resistance by the Japanese during WW2 (possibly after a coup), leading to an Allied invasion and long-term American occupation of Japan proper. This would be pretty awful for everyone involved, but romaji would probably replace kanji and kana if Japan survived as a nation.
 
It seems unlikely that Japan would abandon it's writing system unless it was forced upon it by an occupying or colonial force. The best bet for this is probably a longer resistance by the Japanese during WW2 (possibly after a coup), leading to an Allied invasion and long-term American occupation of Japan proper. This would be pretty awful for everyone involved, but romaji would probably replace kanji and kana if Japan survived as a nation.
It wouldnt work. Japanese has an insane number of homonyms. Apparently, in some conversations, people will sketch kanji as they talk, so the other person will underxtand. (Personal observation by my wife's cousin, who was doing business in Japan.)
 
It wouldnt work. Japanese has an insane number of homonyms. Apparently, in some conversations, people will sketch kanji as they talk, so the other person will underxtand. (Personal observation by my wife's cousin, who was doing business in Japan.)

Yeah, I know, but the realities of the Japanese language don't really matter if there is a vengeful United States intent on restructuring Japanese society as they see fit. This is why I've suggested a worse case scenario (short of extermination) for Japan, because they're sure as hell not going to decide to switch to romaji of their own volition.
 
Yeah, I know, but the realities of the Japanese language don't really matter if there is a vengeful United States intent on restructuring Japanese society as they see fit. This is why I've suggested a worse case scenario (short of extermination) for Japan, because they're sure as hell not going to decide to switch to romaji of their own volition.

That's gonna screw up US relation with China though, and US was sure as hell not about to get a hostile China at that time.
 
Well - if the Russian Orthodox Church managed to get a community up and going, and the community exists before 1917, then it could be possible for the Russian alphabet to be modified to suit Japanese. It actually isn't hard, really - during the Meiji era there were proponents of Nihonsiki, which was meant to be a native Japanese Roman-based writing system which would replace both kanji and kana. In the case of Japanese Cyrillic pre-1917, some of the results would be interesting, considering that it would be somewhat similar to the Church Slavonic alphabet, and the Church Slavonic alphabet has letters for distinctions which are not made in contemporary Russian as well as a way for etymologically writing Greek loanwords. It would be interesting to see how it could work, considering that the Russian hard/soft distinction would perfectly fit Japanese.
 
You mean for Japanese youon?

Yes. The difference between the gojuon and the yôon parallels the Russian distinction between, respectively, hard and soft consonants almost perfectly. The only major difference is that unlike Japanese, Russian has additional cues as to when a particular consonant is hard or not - slightly different articulation of consonants, for example, or a stronger velarization of consonants before <ы> [ɨ] (making it actually [ˠi]), /e/ only occuring in native words after soft consonants, and the like. The Japanese distinction is a simple one based on palatal vs. non-palatal in the back vowels in part due to allophony of /j/. As a result, if the Russian alphabet was adapted for Japanese, it would provide a good fit for showing the distinction in consonants.
 
It is conceivable that a Soviet-occupied Japan (which however is a very unlikely prospect) would adopt the Cyrillic alphabet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillization_of_Japanese Stalin did not in general impose Cyrillic on languages that had traditionally used the Latin alphabet [1] but he did impose it on some which had used "Oriental" writing systems (including at least one nation outside the USSR--Outer Mongolia).

[1] Moldavian is not really an exception, because Romanian (which is what Moldavian really is, Soviet pretenses to the contrary notwithstanding) used the Cyrillic alphabet well into the nineteenth century.
 
Historically, Vietnamese used Chinese characters, but it moved to the Latin script in the late 1800s and early 1900s with the encouragement of both French colonial administrators and eventually Vietnamese nationalists, who felt it would help improve literacy and promote Vietnamese independence.

The same think with Turkish: The low literacy rate was one of the reasons why Ataturk adopted the Latin script for the language.

And this is the reason why Japan is highly unlikely to adopt any other script (other than Kanji-only): Japan was already one of the most literate societies in the world at that time, and that was before modernization. The Meiji era further provided education to everyone, augmenting an already good pre-existing educational system (relative to other societies).

For adoption of Latin script to work, this must happen while literacy rates are still low, and the early Spanish/Portuguese colonization period is the best window for this.
 
Well, as people have said you have to lower Japan's literacy during the Meiji period for language reform to be plausible. Then it simply depends on which country Japan saw as "stronger" at the time and wished to emulate... if Russia was the dominant power during the period, Japan would adopt Cyrillic and so on. Alternatively you could have a threatening China on the horizon, which could (like in the case of Vietnam and Korea) motivate attempts to 'move away' from Chinese.

Not sure how the actual system would look like - Japan has a pseudo-alphabet already so it can't be that difficult to move - and in any case more difficult Westernizations have been attempted (there was a push during the May 4th Movement for China to romanize its own language) so I'm sure the Japanese could figure out a way to do it if they wanted to.

Assuming this happens in the Meiji period the ramifications for Japan would probably be much less compared with the ramifications for East Asia. This is because for most of the 19th Century Japan was a 'conduit' of sorts for Western knowledge in East Asia. East Asian nationalists and reformists spent a lot of time in Japan and most times it was where they got their education. Basic Chinese words like 'telephone', 'science' and 'society' were constructed in Meiji Japan, and similarly so for other East Asian languages.

With Japan going full romanization they will no longer share a common writing script with East Asia (most literati in the 19th C still used Chinese as a script), and so you'd see more 'native' words for Western inventions and less consistency in East Asian languages as a whole, possibly meaning that their cultures diverge even further. Also Japanese romanization will most certainly give a boost to other romanization efforts in the region.
 
Not sure how the actual system would look like - Japan has a pseudo-alphabet already so it can't be that difficult to move - and in any case more difficult Westernizations have been attempted (there was a push during the May 4th Movement for China to romanize its own language) so I'm sure the Japanese could figure out a way to do it if they wanted to.
Except hiragana and katakana have been around for centuries and the Japanese never really made the shift to a fully phonetic writing system. I don't think a foreign writing system would be more acceptable.

I don't feel that the homophone issue is as bad as people think. Most homophones are Sino-Japanese words and have very specific usages. Korean and Vietnamese have just as many words of Sinitic origin yet manage just fine with phonetic writing systems. Any ambiguity in writing could be cleared up the way it is done in the Thai writing system, where different symbols represent the same sound but are used for different words.
 
My friend have read a book about kanji-abolitionists in Japan. So basically, they generally agreed that Kanji was a anachronism and should be abolished. But as for its substitute, they were torn between kana and romaji. The kana-faction and romaji-faction spent much time fighting each other, and kanji was largely left alone.

(yeah, it's from the book, to my friend, to me, and then to you).

Basically, you need a colonial power to push for this. Otherwise social inertia of habit was too strong for a change of script to happen.

As for impacts, it would make the script easier to learn. Although japan was quite literate even before Meiji (More literate than Poland, a latin-alphabet user.) This was probably the reason why the leadership did not feel motivated enough to change the script.

The languages of Korea and China (and probably Vietnam) would be less influenced by Japan, and vice versa. As the three countries now use different systems, they could not just borrow words from each other's language.

I'm not very insistent on culture, but you have to consider the damages. An abrupt change of any script would do irreparable damage to the traditional arts and culture of a nation, including that of the Japanese. It would make the new generation less interested in their old arts, as they now need to cross a language barrier to access their own traditional culture, restricting the talent pool needed to pass on their tradition.
 
Top