Panel proposes guidelines to halt misuse of honorific Japanese

Thursday, February 3, 2005 at 08:07 JST
TOKYO — A government panel on the Japanese language proposed Wednesday setting up the nation’s first guidelines on the use of the honorific and polite form of speech [“keigo“] to counter its widespread misuse….

The panel also calls for revaluating Chinese characters designated for common use, known as “joyo kanji,” to reflect current use of Chinese characters on computers.

The current joyo kanji table, which specifies 1,945 common Chinese characters, has not been updated since 1981. The panel notes that the table did not foresee the widespread use of computers.

The panel also suggested the need for conducting research on the public’s ability to write and read Chinese characters, and how frequently certain ones are used for the names of people and places.

An Agency for Cultural Affairs official said it is necessary to study some characters that are often used but not included in the table. (Kyodo News)

And their point is…? With computers, people are increasingly unable to write characters by hand.