Why do japanese have to use kanji?

Question

why don't you just use katakana or hiragana?

Answer 1

The answer becomes apparent the more you study Japanese.

Japanese is full of homonyms.  There would be no way of distinguishing them, unless the context was really obvious, if you didn't use kanji.

Attempts were made in the past to simplify Japanese into kana or even just romaji, but they failed.  It just wouldn't work.

In English, we can distinguish words that sound the same by spelling:  pair, pear, pare, etc.

In Japanese one kana = one sound.  There are extremely few exceptions, like how は　sometimes sounds like "ha", but sometimes "wa".

Not only does Japanese have a lot of homonyms, but the sounds in Japanese are also fairly limited.  In English we can distinguish similar sounding words by a slight difference in pronunciation, but Japanese doesn't have enough sounds to always allow that to happen.  For example, in English we say "right" or "light" and distinguish the sounds "r" and "l", but in Japanese, most Japanese can't even distinguish those two sounds.  The sounds aren't distinguished in the Japanese language itself.

Just try writing an entire letter in kana, and see how difficult it will be for someone to read.

Answer 2

they dont rele have to - i read in a book that they learn it to be a beautiful poece of art - its beautiful to them - i guess thats why - idk

Answer 3

Because, kanji have special meanings of itself even a letter.

Both katakana and hiragana don't have meanings only one letter.

Answer 4

You do not have to use Kanji when writing...but it does make it easier.

Hiragana is the actual written language of Japan..but to write it all out in hiragana is difficult to read..since many of the kanji denotes what we are actually talking about. I mean to say that the kanji itself is representative of what the word actually means, not just the sound of the word since many Japanese words sound exactly the same.

Katakana is only used when there is a foreign word that has no translation into Japanese, like the word Hamburger (Ha N Ba Ga ハンバーガー)

When reading a periodical in Japan, most of them will have the hiragana written in parenthesis above the kanji especially for more difficult ones. Very common ones usually do not.

My husband was learning to read and write in japanese and he started with basic hiragana, then katakana then worked his way up to learning Kanji just like you would if you went to Japan junior school! To practice he would write letters to my family in Japan and for a long time they were only in hiragana/katakana...it is ok, but childish!

Answer 5

Yeah, the answer above is really good! :D

BUt yeah its cuz theres a lot of homonyms. :D

Answer 6

another reason is kanji seems to be more efficient when writing and reading.

you can't imagine how hard for you to read japanese written in kanas, especially in fast reading or skimming.