Hi,
After watching Yoshito-sensei’s video on the differences between Chinese and Japanese characters, I thought it would be interesting to learn about the origin of kanji.
I remember learning in my history class that Japan did not actually have a writing system in the past and therefore decided to borrow Chinese characters in order to create their own writing system.
There are two main types of writing systems in the Chinese language: simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese. Most countries use simplified Chinese, but Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau use traditional. (As indicated by the names, people who use traditional Chinese can easily read simplified Chinese, but it’s much harder the other way around.)
I have Chinese-Malaysian friends from Malaysia where the majority of Chinese speakers use simplified and they always comment that learning kanji is difficult for them because kanji typically is based on traditional. (This would make sense because simplified is quite new; the writing system was only introduced in 1956 according to google.)
However, I also have friends from Taiwan and Hong Kong who say that while kanji is mostly based on traditional, there are some elements of simplified Chinese in some characters. Of course, languages do evolve over time, but it makes me wonder why there are some kanji characters based on simplified Chinese.
Sorry for the long post and thank you for taking the time to read this!