Alphabet

 Is it true that kanji was created by a single person?

In fact, I lean toward the theory that a single individual actually created it. It makes complete sense to me that the alphabet was invented by the Phoenicians engaged in commerce, who borrowed characters based on their sounds because Egyptian hieroglyphs were far too complex.

They simplified it for practical use.

Given the sheer complexity of kanji, however, it is hard to believe that ordinary people generated and began using it spontaneously. Rather, doesn’t it make more sense that a superhuman figure like Cangjie—the legendary four-eyed sage—invented it, and it was initially used exclusively within an elite class of intellectuals?

If historical fact dictates that it took hundreds of years to develop, we must separate fact from folklore. But what is your perspective on this?

What do you think the future holds for kanji?

Consider the fact that the 26 letters of the alphabet can express an almost infinite number of new concepts (with just 10 letters, you can create 141 trillion combinations). Look also at the rapid evolution of emojis.

Good morning.

Now, to jump right in: approximately how many acronyms exist in the English language?

Thank you. That was the first time I had ever heard the term "initialism." I am glad to have added a new word to my vocabulary.

Wow, so there are as many acronyms as there are words in a standard unabridged English dictionary!

I believe traditional English vocabulary has its structural limits. It expanded around specific roots (primarily Latin and Greek), and prefixes or suffixes are inherently rigid and unchangeable.

On the other hand, acronyms are completely free from those constraints.

They brilliantly overcome one of English’s core weaknesses: the tendency for expressions to become excessively long when describing certain concepts. When compressed into three or four letters, the human brain can recognize them instantly in a single glance.

Furthermore, even with long individual words like information or recapitulation, people just say info or recap, which works perfectly. Doesn't that make English incredibly powerful?

What I am currently pondering is how kanji will transform down the road in the grand process of linguistic evolution.

While kanji does possess a certain internal logic, it is largely a system of ideograms created through intuition and artistic sensibility. Conversely, when you trace abbreviations like acronyms, info, or recap back to their origins, their exact meanings can be precisely understood.

These acronyms and short forms are currently in a stage of infinite creation, essentially replicating pattern recognition—the very hallmark and strength of kanji. To be honest, it is amazing. English is independently adopting the best features of kanji and multiplying them infinitely.

Today, 1.4 billion people use kanji in their daily lives. Although we rarely write them by hand anymore, I often feel that processing kanji consumes a massive amount of brain CPU, making it more mentally taxing than English.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the future of kanji.

Back when we were students, we started learning English in junior high school. Nowadays, children start in elementary school, and some kindergartens even teach it.

Human beings naturally tend to avoid redundant or roundabout expressions when saying the same thing. Consequently, Japanese speakers are rapidly adopting highly convenient, English-derived abbreviations in their daily lives.

Recently, I memorized terms like HTTP, FTP, SFTP, TLS, SSL, PPTP, TCP, UDP, ARP, and SSDL. To you, it must be immediately obvious that these are all protocols used within the OSI model.

Even if the ratio of these loanwords and abbreviations is only about 10% right now, there is a high probability that a reversal will occur at some point across generations. I suspect kanji will continue to be actively used for a few more generations, but eventually, it will shift into something whose meaning people can still recognize, yet rarely choose to actively use.

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