Homonyms in Japanese
Posted: May 27, 2011 | Author: Doug 陀愚 | Filed under: Japanese, JLPT, Language | 6 Comments »Recently, while reading Tae Kim’s excellent article about Kanji, he addressed the question about the usefulness of kanji in Japanese language. One might ask, why such a convoluted system (2 alphabets + kanji)? As Tae Kim explains, the kanji help because Japanese has many words that sound the same (homonyms). They provide necessary “cues”. Indeed, as he points out, if you look really common-sounding compound words like “kikan” (きかん), quite a few words appear.
As I now study for the JLPT N2, I found many vocabulary words are homonyms of each other, and the only way you can tell the difference is by the kanji or the context. 以外 and 意外 are both read as “igai” while 機会 機械 and 器械 are all “kikai”. If I had to guess, it’s because these words were all imported from Chinese originally, where tone-marks and other things to distinguish them got lost in Japanese pronunciation. If you look at “kun-yomi”, or Japanese native words, you see fewer homonyms (e.g. “kumo” can mean cloud or spider).
However, verbs also have lots of homonyms too (and these aren’t Chinese-imported compound words either): 付く, 着く, 突く and 点く are all verbs pronounced as “tsuku”, but each mean something different. If you are familiar with the kanji, then it’s pretty obvious, or the context usually is pretty obvious. However, when you’re first learning vocabulary, you have to be ready for this. Before I took Japanese studies seriously, I used to get terribly confused by the word あつい (“atsui”) which can mean hot (e.g. weather) 暑い, or thick 厚い, or hot (e.g. object) 熱い.
Anyway read more at Tae Kim’s page. It’s a good read for every Japanese-language student. 
Hello, this blog is about my life as a father, Buddhist and Japanophile. Any useful information I can pass along will hopefully make the 
Hello friend. I just came back from your fair city. Unfortunately I didn’t get the chance to do much sightseeing, but hopefully you were feeling the good vibes I was sending your way.
Wow- JLPT N2! I am impressed!! Because I have so few to communicate with in Japanese, my language skills have gone down the drain. I have taken a practice test though and probably could pass JLPT N4. I’ve had a renewed interest though and am studying again. My mom-in-law wants to take another class with me too so I am really looking forward to that.
When do you plan on taking the exam??
Hi Jeannie,
Yeah the JLPT is hard if you don’t live in Japan. I struggle quite a bit with the N2 though I think I can still pass either this year or the next. It’s a matter of time and investment.
The N2 like all versions is only given once a year in December. Only 6 months remain.
Yes, all testing is given in December. I was wondering if your plan was to take it this year.
Just curious- are you taking the JLPT for personal enrichment or do you plan to work or attend school there?
I tip my hat to you. JLPT is not easy (as you know).
Hi Jeannie,
Yeah, I am taking it this year. I am not 100% confident I’ll pass, but I am really trying to get up to speed before too late. I don’t want to cram at the last minute, there’s way too much content. I am taking the JLPT for a lot of reasons, but certainly personal enrichment and to have a benchmark to compare with when learning Japanese.
I can’t say I agree with Tae Kim’s assessment. I think he is coming at it from the viewpoint of a non-native speaker and also supposing both English and Japanese have always been written the way they are now.
I *do* agree that kanji really do help distinguish homonyms, especially for non-natives. I don’t think they are indispensable, otherwise *spoken* Japanese would be difficult to understand as well. I think Japanese people may well read Japanese differently. They read what they expect to be there and they read sounds not images or definitions. I think this could be demonstrated with studies on the errors made in reading and writing Japanese by natives.
(Once reading was even more complex than now when kanbun was the standard for the educated man.)
Also, there was never any serious attempt to introduce romaji, successful or otherwise. There were (and are) movements advocating the use of romaji and there was a large script reform in the post war era (but this was essentially started before the American occupation). Nor was romaji about doing away “…with all the complicated characters that was bewildering the foreign white devils.” It was about increasing literacy and production for the Japanese themselves. Pre-war Japanese literacy was dreadful. I think over 50% of conscripts in the Imperial Army were functionally illiterate. (I’d need to look up the figures.) Learning Kanji and retaining that knowledge through daily reading is extremely time consuming and hence limited to the social classes that had the free time to do it.
There were limited trials with romaji, which showed very encouraging results. Reading ability improved by three grades for instance. I wonder what these children would have achieved if the language reform went through? And in the end that’s the point. You do well at what you have learnt and what you know. (If we were interested in sensible, we’d adopt spelling reforms and the Dvorak keyboard layout.) If kanji were dropped tomorrow in favour of kana I’m sure everyone would adapt and rules would develop about spacing and punctuation; and the characters and fonts would change to become more easily readable. Word usage could well change as well.
But it’ll never happen. Kanji are here to stay, with all the overhead that comes with them. But I wouldn’t bet on the language not changing, look at pre-war writing compared to today and see the different proportion of kanji used.
(If you have the time, read J Marshall Ungar on Japanese literacy, romaji, romaji in the post-war period and the problems with the speed of Japanese data input on computers.)
sorry if all that’s a rant
Hi Robert,
I didn’t read Tae Kim’s article the same way you did, or perhaps I just misread it.
As for the transition from Sinified scripts to Western ones, and interesting use-case is Vietnam. Vietnamese is closer (though still very different) than Chinese, but they used Chiense script for ages even after French missionaries created a Western-style script. It wasn’t until the Communists in the 1920s promoted that romanized script to aid in communication (Chinese characters were mostly used by educated, gentry class of Confucian scholars) that people really adopted it. I guess if there’s a tangible reason, people will switch as needed.
Language is certainly fluid and evolves to meet natural pressures from society. Almost like Darwin’s Natural Selection in a way.