That's a fair point and I agree in general. However, in this specific case I disagree.
To show that I agree, allow me to point out how in my earlier comment I used the word "radical" in a technically incorrect but more useful (in my opinion) way. Technically each kanji has only a single radical and the rest are pseudo-radicals, but for most purposes it's simply more useful to just refer to them all as "radicals". Additionally, I don't know of a more proper term than pseudo-radicals and the distinction isn't very important anymore because radical order dictionaries have essentially become obsolete by technology.
I fully acknowledge that excess pedantry can be a roadblock to clear communication.
Now I'll explain why I disagree in this specific case:
The issue is that "alphabet" is a very specific term like "x86 CPU". While it's not too wrong to go around calling the things inside GPUs and most phones "x86 CPU"s, it's technically incorrect and to those with in-depth knowledge, it's needlessly confusing when there's a perfectly good word that we can use to describe them, "CPU" or in the case of writing systems, "writing system".
Although, I do agree that syllabries and alphabets are not too dissimilar, logographic systems and alphabets are quite dissimilar.
Perhaps it's simply a matter of who I've talked to, but I've never heard anyone who knew how to use these writing systems refer to them as "alphabet"s, so I felt the need to correct it. I'd be willing to believe that my friends are much more pedantic than the average person.
Thus, it is somewhat pedantic but I feel that it's a useful distinction and that an adequate alternative word exists. Additionally due to this being on HN as opposed to a casual conversation, I think using the more correct, more precise, and more useful word when possible is a fair goal to strive towards.
Pitch accent + clarification when needed. Subtitles are extremely common here. See my response to a response of this comment for more details.
The tl;dr is that the language is harder in speech than in writing. If you stick to well-worn paths people will know what you're saying, but I often have to discuss the written form of the more obscure words I say or just write it down and show it to my conversational partner.
Spoken Japanese is much more ambiguous. There's a reason subtitles are ubiquitous here. Americans who didn't understand the language tried and failed to get rid of kanji after world war 2. The langauge just does not work without them.
Additionally spoken Japanese uses pitch accent to distinguish homophones such as 雨 and 飴. Long strings of kana are difficult to read period. Native Japanese people struggle and can easily be confused by them in my experience.
Korean isn't comparable because it's phonetically much more diverse and uses spaces.
Kanji / hanzi work just fine for over a billion people. They make skim reading easier and add a lot of character and depth to the language. Westerners have a perception that kanji are hard to learn, and perhaps they're a bit harder than an alphabet, but in the age of computers, it really is a non-issue to learn and use them.
I respectfully disagree. As someone with knowledge on the subject, the post I responded to was just incorrect.
Alphabet is a specific term with a specific meaning and connotations. It's factually incorrect and misleading to call anything other than romaji that Japanese uses an Alphabet. Very little intuition about alphabets applies because they're just not alphabets.
The issues with Kanji are unqiue to Japanese. Chinese does not have them.
I'm going to stop posting because it seems people more calm and well-spoken than me with knowledge on the subject are posting.
Sorry again for the poor tone. I'll try harder next time.
Sorry, but I really strongly disagree with this. I've studied Japanese for 6 years, Chinese for 3 and am currently in Japan.
Some of your comments come off as extremely ignorant. For example, neither the kana syllabries nor the logographic kanji system are alphabets.
The distinction between Hiragana and Katakana is more of a distinction between emphasis on sound (Katakana) and normal writing of words. Katakana is used for more than foreign words.
Kanji / hanzi is absolutely not a travesty. In fact, Japanese would be nearly unusable without it (in my opinion). But your calling it "left over from cave paintings" seems to imply that you're simply not familiar with it, so I'll do my best to explain:
A very small percentage of kanji / hanzi are pictographic (in the range of 1-3%) with a similar percentage being ideographic. Thus nearly all kanji / hanzi have written forms that have nothing to do with what they mean.
There are around 200 radicals which make up kanji. They're compounds of these simple pieces, much like letters make up a word. For example, it doesn't make sense to ask why there's a "t" in water and it doesn't make sense to ask why a radical is part of a character (in general, there are exceptions to this in both English and Japanese).
I wouldn't describe Japanese sentence structure as strictly reversed. For simple sentences it often is, but in general sentences are just structured in an entirely different way.
Japanese "exceptions in pronunciation" are in fact the hardest part of the langauge in my opinion. Pronunciation of kanji in Japanese can be a bit messy, especially compared to Chinese. In fact the island of Iwojima was famously misread by Japanese admirals. The island's name's proper pronunciation would be something like iwotou.
Despite the pronunciation issue with kanji in Japanese (especially in edge cases), the written form is useful and beautiful enough to justify the cost.
Japanese is a truly beautiful language and I recommend anyone with the patience to commit thousands of hours to it, to absolutely go for it -- you'll be rewarded.
I'm very sorry if this comes off as insulting by the way. It's 12:40am here and I got triggered by this comment and felt a strong compulsion to add my thoughts and opinions.
To show that I agree, allow me to point out how in my earlier comment I used the word "radical" in a technically incorrect but more useful (in my opinion) way. Technically each kanji has only a single radical and the rest are pseudo-radicals, but for most purposes it's simply more useful to just refer to them all as "radicals". Additionally, I don't know of a more proper term than pseudo-radicals and the distinction isn't very important anymore because radical order dictionaries have essentially become obsolete by technology.
I fully acknowledge that excess pedantry can be a roadblock to clear communication.
Now I'll explain why I disagree in this specific case:
The issue is that "alphabet" is a very specific term like "x86 CPU". While it's not too wrong to go around calling the things inside GPUs and most phones "x86 CPU"s, it's technically incorrect and to those with in-depth knowledge, it's needlessly confusing when there's a perfectly good word that we can use to describe them, "CPU" or in the case of writing systems, "writing system".
Although, I do agree that syllabries and alphabets are not too dissimilar, logographic systems and alphabets are quite dissimilar.
Perhaps it's simply a matter of who I've talked to, but I've never heard anyone who knew how to use these writing systems refer to them as "alphabet"s, so I felt the need to correct it. I'd be willing to believe that my friends are much more pedantic than the average person.
Thus, it is somewhat pedantic but I feel that it's a useful distinction and that an adequate alternative word exists. Additionally due to this being on HN as opposed to a casual conversation, I think using the more correct, more precise, and more useful word when possible is a fair goal to strive towards.