Actually, the difficulty in writing does not correspond perfectly to the number of characters used.
Japanese is very difficult because often the pronunciation of a character is seemingly random (百足 becomes むかで), especially in place names (栗田 in northern Kyoto is pronounced くんだ rather than くりた). Even among most standard pronunciation of the characters, there are often very many of them so it is difficult to know which is which. It is difficult enough that even native speakers often read things wrong at first, if they are not familiar with whatever the place or word is (even though they're familiar with the kanji and its primary pronunciations, since, as you say, not so many are used).
From my understanding, this aspect is much easier in Chinese. I'm not disagreeing with you, since I'm not qualified being that I don't know Chinese. But, if you think that the number of characters is what makes Japanese reading and writing difficult, you are wrong.
Posted by Anonymous on Aug 24th, 2010 at 12:11 am.
Actually, the difficulty in
Actually, the difficulty in writing does not correspond perfectly to the number of characters used.
Japanese is very difficult because often the pronunciation of a character is seemingly random (百足 becomes むかで), especially in place names (栗田 in northern Kyoto is pronounced くんだ rather than くりた). Even among most standard pronunciation of the characters, there are often very many of them so it is difficult to know which is which. It is difficult enough that even native speakers often read things wrong at first, if they are not familiar with whatever the place or word is (even though they're familiar with the kanji and its primary pronunciations, since, as you say, not so many are used).
From my understanding, this aspect is much easier in Chinese. I'm not disagreeing with you, since I'm not qualified being that I don't know Chinese. But, if you think that the number of characters is what makes Japanese reading and writing difficult, you are wrong.