lol that's like comparing apples and oranges, since english and american english, no matter how different, are still made from letters. Chinese (any dialect) is still made of piccies

Why don't Japanese abandon kanji and write with hiragana only? (Don't answer. I know it's a stupid question. It's just that I'm trying to read a Japanese fairytale and can't remeber all the kanji)

tsk tsk, am I detecting some Usagi in you, red_shine?

@Shiny: I really hope they'll do that too!

But I still feel that Kanji is kind of esthetic and reduces the number of words (characters).

That's because if they abandon the kanji it'll take forever to write a sentence. Plus not all words are in hiragana, some are in katakana/kanji.

I know all that. But they could at least use furigana more often, just so that non-Japanese readers have less problems with reading.

LOL, aisling. Usagi? Me? No way. Gourry, probably, but not Usagi.

I agree, since some words of Kanji may have more than one pronunciation.

I would very glad to prefer there's a reading aid (furigana) just on top of the Kanji words.

When I watched Hana Yori Dango (Japanese version of Meteor Garden), there was one character that said there's two ways of speaking kanji, one's the Chinese the other's Japanese.

Yes, that's kunyomi and onyomi.

"
Why don't Japanese abandon kanji and write with hiragana only? (Don't answer. I know it's a stupid question. It's just that I'm trying to read a Japanese fairytale and can't remeber all the kanji)
"

^ that's like saying why don't any language get rid of their convoluted language rules and simplify their language. lol

(look at how many exceptions there is in english. i before e except in receive. Or stupid pronunciation rules. Even though american NorCal english is my native language, I still mess up pronouncing words until my friends correct me [while laughing at me D:] )

@KTC: Well, I've never realize that native speakers make mistakes on English, especially the pronunciation.

By the way, what's American NorCal?

@mika: trust me, english is still confusing even for native speakers. lol

Well there's the american english for US. And than its broken state wise. Mine is california. so American CA english. Than its broken to which area: North california or south california. So American NorCal english if you want to get really specific. XD (we have a slightly different words/slang usage than SoCal)

mikasalla:

"@KTC: Well, I've never realize that native speakers make mistakes on English, especially the pronunciation."

Americans can do ANYTHING wrong. Trust me, anything And I bet KTC kinda supports me with this thought (not only the pronunciation part that she already did)

And I'm kinda serious, really...


But there are some simple words, that English speaking children cannot write correctly. They know how to pronounce but they have no idea how to write. One example is "orange". And that's not even hard.

@leelah: lol, true. contrary to how Bush and my various spokespersons: americans are just as flawed as any other human on this planet.

as for cannot write correctly: most likely because we try to sound out the words and a lot of words don't sound anything like how they look. For example, lingerie, prejudice, route, aunt, axe, blonde, hopping vs hoping, knight vs night, affect vs effect, drawer,etc

KTC:

"most likely because we try to sound out the words and a lot of words don't sound anything like how they look. For example, lingerie, prejudice, route, aunt, axe, blonde, hopping vs hoping, knight vs night, affect vs effect, drawer,etc"

Yeah, I figured it out that much But your alphabet doesn't support all the pronunciation forms in words (for example "orange", 'a' is pronounced as 'e' ). And with 'i' there's the alphabetical pronunciation and 'e'-like pronunciation for different purposes and with different consonants (island vs. immobile <- im as prefix to 'mobile', I don't remember but do all i-prefixes sound like 'e'?).

(How I love the phonetics )

It's funny, because here in Finland me and my brother don't see anything difficult in
pronunciation <-> writing either way. I mean in English.

@leelah: that might just be you and your bro. Probably doesn't apply to all Finnish(?) ppl.

Though the ones I always have difficulty remembering is their/there/they're, its/it's immigrate/emigrate, and those types.

One time my teacher gave us a writing exercise and said to use the word knight. I was the only one in the class who wrote about night rather than knight. rofl

Well I always thought monolingual people don't make much mistakes on their own native tougue lol.

I'm multilingual and can speak in five of seven languages fluently. And think English pronunciation and spelling are easy and not confusing for me lol.

"Well I always thought monolingual people don't make much mistakes on their own native tougue lol."

Oh you have no idea how many mistakes Finnish ppl can do when writing something in native And for us there shouldn't be any difficult forms, because we say everything as it's written letter by letter.

The problems are with mixing A, O and U with Ä and Ö (a with dots and o with dots). E and I are universal vowels that can be mixed with AOU and ÄÖ. Only foreign based words like "konduktööri (conductor in the train)" give some ppl hard time when writing OR pronouncing because there is this mix of U + Ö

SO: AOU are pronounced back in mouth, almost from the throat and (EI)ÄÖ are pronounced front in the mouth.

ÄÖ are so narrow to pronounce that in original Finnish words there is no mix of front + back vowels.

EI are wide front vowels so they can be mixed with any of the AOU (wide from the back) or ÄÖ (narrow from the front), even though they are pronounced in the front.

And besides compound words are difficult for ppl, too, today and it's sad...

honestly all you need to do is browse around the internet a little, and you'll find myriads of mistakes in the english language.

Note to the world:
Their=belongs to them
There=a place
They're=they are

not that difficult.

One interesting fact about English that amuses me is the fact that a few of the pronounciations that don't make sense were actually mistakes that were made by Royalty.

e.g. "Island" ... the only reason the 's' is in there is because an English Prince made a mistake and no one dared to correct him.

There were a few more I was told about, but I can't for the life of me remember.