11
Why are words relating to plants, reptiles & insects often written in Kana instead of Kanji? (nord.pub)
submitted 2 days ago by to c/japaneselanguage@sopuli.xyz
7 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

For example, 蠍 is written as サソリ. Even if they use the Kanji in text, they add furigana above it rather than letting the audience themselves decipher the meaning. It's the same with 榊 (サカキ), 仙人掌 (サボテン), 百足 (ムカデ), 蟻 (アリ), 鰐 (ワニ), you get the picture. Why can't they just write them in Kanji without furigana in the same frequency as encountering 本 or 日 upon encountering texts containing these types of words?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 5 points 2 days ago

https://youtube.com/shorts/zugG5AJBFDY

Kyota Ko did this video as an explainer. They tried to eradicate more confusing and irregular Kanji readings because they often make no sense and you don't deal with all animals every day. So just write them in katakana and that makes it obvious enough you're dealing with an animal and you don't need subtitles for it.

The animals that regularly get a Kanji today are common AND their Kanji has - in the logic of Japanese - unambiguous readings (e.g. 猫, 犬, 像, etc.).

Don't ever encourage Japanese to do more with Kanji. Won't anybody think of the gaijin?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
    •