Not quite. The Ottoman variation of the Perso-Arabic script was actually pretty complex, seeing as it borrowed loanwords from all over the place without bothering to making them fit into Turkish pronunciation (much like how English orthography operates) and largely adopted the form that was used originally for Persian with some minor changes. On top of that, vowel diacritics were often omitted in Ottoman writing - which works fine in Arabic, but in a language like Turkish where vowels are important it actually creates massive issues since even from context it's hard to disambiguate words written in this manner. By this point, it should be noted that there were some attempts to reform the Ottoman script to make it more "phonetic" (= phonemic), but all of them were massively opposed by conservative forces who did not want to break with tradition as inherited from Arabic (keeping in mind that even the Arabic component in Ottoman Turkish was complex and similar to the different types of readings of Chinese characters in Written Japanese, which added more needless complications). So reformers looked around for alternative solutions, even briefly experimenting with Armenian script for a bit, before settling on the Latin script. So in this case, the idea of Latinization was nothing new; what was new were the exact details.
Japan abolishes Kanji during the Meiji Restoration.
- Thread starter LetThemEatCake
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Not quite. The Ottoman variation of the Perso-Arabic script was actually pretty complex, seeing as it borrowed loanwords from all over the place without bothering to making them fit into Turkish pronunciation (much like how English orthography operates) and largely adopted the form that was used originally for Persian with some minor changes. On top of that, vowel diacritics were often omitted in Ottoman writing - which works fine in Arabic, but in a language like Turkish where vowels are important it actually creates massive issues since even from context it's hard to disambiguate words written in this manner. By this point, it should be noted that there were some attempts to reform the Ottoman script to make it more "phonetic" (= phonemic), but all of them were massively opposed by conservative forces who did not want to break with tradition as inherited from Arabic (keeping in mind that even the Arabic component in Ottoman Turkish was complex and similar to the different types of readings of Chinese characters in Written Japanese, which added more needless complications). So reformers looked around for alternative solutions, even briefly experimenting with Armenian script for a bit, before settling on the Latin script. So in this case, the idea of Latinization was nothing new; what was new were the exact details.
To summarize, the main issue here is utilitarian, something that goes beyond these grand old nationalist narratives.
Turks were mainly illiterate after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The adoption of the Latin alphabet was politically viable considering Ataturk's ideology, but the main goal was to increase literacy. People simply didn't know how to read and the new modern government needed to address that issue.
Japan, OTOH, already had a considerable amount of people who knew how to read during the Meiji Restoration. It wouldn't make any sense to make everyone illiterate when you're trying to modernize.
Turks were mainly illiterate after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The adoption of the Latin alphabet was politically viable considering Ataturk's ideology, but the main goal was to increase literacy. People simply didn't know how to read and the new modern government needed to address that issue.
Japan, OTOH, already had a considerable amount of people who knew how to read during the Meiji Restoration. It wouldn't make any sense to make everyone illiterate when you're trying to modernize.
Yes I have seen Ottoman Turkish script and it's not significantly more complicated than Latin at least on paper.
I was talking about the Atuturk Revolution vs. the Meiji Restoration. They had different aims despite some superficial parallels. I wasn't speaking about the scripts.
EDIT: I wasn't as correct on the issue of script as I thought I was. I'll give you that.
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Some of this was new information to me so I must admit I was partially incorrect.
However it was still very much possible to simplify the writing while retaining a Perso-Arabic base, in which case it would be loosely analogous to revised kanji or hanzi. Hence the comparison is far from perfect. Moreover for Kemal, settling on Latin script was as much an ideological thing as it was a literacy thing. Turkey was a broken nation, and whatever identities and people-groups left from the days of the Ottoman Empire needed a new sense of belonging now that the cosmopolitan Ottoman Empire was gone. Hence he brought into power and forged a new identity for the Ottoman remnants - Turkish. He drew provinces inspired by French departments, he brought in Latin script to inspire Turks to look to the West. He had clear aims and accomplished those aims.
You need a different, probably weaker and unstable, pre-modern bakufu for it to be necessary, the abandonment of the Chinese script in Korea and Vietnam came in an effort to increase literacy and strengthen the government through it (even then Hangul took centuries to take off, becoming predominant only in the late 19th century to the 20th, ironically the Japanese colonial government was a strong supporter of it), once the West comes knocking the Japanese government realizes that they need a skilled, literate workforce fast and pull a script reform abolishing Kanji in favor of pure kana/latin.
IOTL Japan already had around 40% literacy (in places like Edo and Osaka it was much higher), so it wasn't necessary.
IOTL Japan already had around 40% literacy (in places like Edo and Osaka it was much higher), so it wasn't necessary.
Pre-1945 official Japanese and especially pre-Meiji Japanese is hard to understand from my foreign perspective. IIRC most modern Japanese have trouble understanding pre-Meiji Japanese. Although I don't know if it's just the Japanese version of how formal English writing (and translations into English) a century ago is pretty stilted and complicated compared to modern English writing (even much academic/legal writing).
Nah, that's submission to the West and French and German have weird and ambiguous orthographies. Of European languages, Spanish and Finnish are the best since they're pretty consistent in terms of phonology although post-revolution Russian is also great.
As a spanish speaking, the german phonetics are usely as they're very useful for vowels and homophones...guess what japanese need a lot?
Japanese has a simple vowel system and a simple tone system. You could alter the existing the kana to add a dakuten or similar diacritic on the vowel to mark the accent (although it would only be valid for whatever Standard Japanese becomes TTL).
Heard many people jesting that it's a hard call selecting if Finnish is drunk Japanese or if Japanese is drunk Finnish
Nah, Finnish is drunk swedish...Heard many people jesting that it's a hard call selecting if Finnish is drunk Japanese or if Japanese is drunk Finnish
Portuguese is drunk Russian heard from a distance. Change my mind.Nah, Finnish is drunk swedish...
I actually considered self-reporting that post to see if it met this site's civility standards. I decided that doing so was unnecessary, since if it was bad enough it'd likely be reported as such and you'd act accordingly.
This is oft stated, but I tend to agree with those scholars who see this as largely a matter of writing style traditions. Otherwise, it would be hard to comprehend how Japanese people can actually speak the language and actually convey meaning (mostly) unambiguously, which of course they do.
(well, I know that in some cases, gestures hinting at the relevant character are used for disambiguation in speech, and spoken contexts do indeed often imply more clues for understanding, but still).
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I think a rather big reason why Korean needed to have a regular alphabet, and Japanese did not, is the phonotactic differences. Korean words readily end in sharp consonants, while Japanese and Chinese words never do. Japanese pronunciation is thus simpler, and needs no alphabet to make things clear.
Japanese pronounciation tends to be rather uniform too. Every do, no, wa, ka, tends to be said much the same way.
There is pitch accent - you don't pronounce hashi (chopsticks) and hashi (bridge) in the same way. That being said, pitch accent is less something formalized into the language and more or less just a convention (ie, not using it just makes you sound like a foreigner, not like you're misspeaking).
The real problem is that without kanji to delineate where words stop/start, Japanese is actually really hard to read. You can read a sentence with kanji much much much faster than a sentence with pure hiragana.
If Japan was almost entirely illiterate, maybe you could swing this, but 1860 Japan had one of the highest literacy rates in the non-industrialized world, so anything that would make Japanese much harder for the top third of society sounds like a nonstarter.
that's fair and I should have mentioned it.
whatdoyoumeanthisishardtoread? icanreadthisjustfine. japanesewouldstillbeasreadibleasitisnowandditchingkanjidefinitelywouldn'thurtatall. keepingkanjiisbakaandconfusingforgaijin.
yeah.
Japan's long history of literacy and its long literary tradition definitely are of significance here.
Ironically, that's a lot easier to read just because English often has a lot of letters/sets of letters that you typically see on the end of sentences. In contrast uh, outside of the -n hiragana, you don't really get that in Japanese at all...