I used to have the same problem with having an unhelpful volume of reviews. I fixed it by only adding things to SRS that I have come across twice. That way you make sure to memorise the vocabulary which is repeatedly used in a given story, but don’t have hundreds of unrepeated words to slog through when you want to be reading instead.
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I have finished work now, so I have time for a proper reply. There are many examples of what I am about to show you in Japanese, but just for times sake, I will pick one.
Let’s have a look at these kanji:
図る、測る、計る、量る、謀る、蒦。
What do they all have in common? They all have the reading はかる。In japanese, はかる means to measure something, each kanji just has a different flavor of ‘measure’.
図 means to aim for/aspire to (in the sense of mapping out a path, and the work required to get there) (Measure)
測 means to gauge, or estimate something. (Measure)
計 means to plot, or plan. (Measure)
量 means to weigh or quantify. (Measure)
謀 means to plot, or scheme/conspire. (Measure)
蒦 means to measure by encompassing, or enveloping something.
It is no coincidence that they all read as はかる。They all have the same meaning. The same meaning that is derived from kana. Kanji adds ‘nuance’ to kana. But (unless it is katakana words from other languages) kana has a strong meaning, even with no kanji.
I did never argue against that. I only said it not true to say that Japanese existed without kanji. What we know as Japanese is product of Japanese history and culture, combinations of many protojaponic languages, outside influences (mostly chinese and english) and adoption of writing system. There was no Japanese before kanji in modern meaning of this word. Those were different languages.
Idea that they introduce their phonetic heritage to their writing system seems pretty obvious to me. But we have to remember that there was coevolution between those two. I am pretty sure that with kanji many words would not be created. For example: 手紙 (which is not chinese loan word since in their language those characters means toilet paper). There is many possible way Japanese could make a word for it. But there was important reason to make it fit writing system: otherwise it would be hard to read.
From modern examples how writing system impact phonology we can look at english loan words. There is no other reason why word スケートボード is so deformed than the fact it is the best way to write down in somewhat similar manner to original. It should be at worst “skeytbord” with strong Japanese accent.
And i believe it was you who said that Japanese people can easily create new words by combining existing kanji. We don’t really disagree 
I not skilled enough yet to judge but are you sure it is not the same situation as with:
見る、観る、視る、診る
or
聞く、聴く、訊く
which are different writing of the same word to add more precision in writing?
This is just absolutely, 100% wrong. I advise you read about Japanese history.
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You are correct, they are similar examples. みる、has many nuances. Keep in mind you yourself said 'more precision to ‘writing’. They do nothing for conversation.
I will give you easier to understand analogy:
Is Latin language dialect of Italian?
It is not an analogy. Latin and English are entirely different languages. Japanese has always been only Japanese.
I didn’t say English. Italian.
Italian has more in common with Latin that Japanese with prehistoric Japanese.
I don’t speak Italian. I wouldn’t be able to answer that question. I am sorry about your view of Japanese. It will make learning the language hard. I wish you the best though.
Hmm… how so?
Could you explain? I don’t see how we disagree other than about definition of word language (which by the way is: a system of communication used by a particular country or community.)
If you see some sign of misconception on my side please explain it more clearly. I am not that smart and I used to being wrong so if it the case now i would be happy do discover it rather sooner than later.
You said yourself that kana were added to kanji as an ‘afterthought’
Yet you then also point out yourself all the different kanji used for みる、to show a different variant of the same meaning.
It is because you are contradicting yourself that I am worried about what your real intention is. If your real intention is to learn, why change your argument message to message? It seems like you just want to be right. And I myself am no Japanese expert, I still get plenty of things wrong. I am just trying to point out to you that you are only hurting yourself by having such a shallow view of the language.
Simple misunderstanding. I could avoid it by saying Chinese characters not Kanji. They didn’t even have being created with an intention to work with Japanese. Japanese has to work around it. It wasn’t created for their phonology. My bad for not being clear enough.
Now it makes more sense?
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I don’t want to discourage you from learning by just saying my opinion like a broken record. I just recommend you approach Japanese more open mindedly.
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My first lightbulb moment in japanese was when I understood the way subordinate clauses work.
It was early on in my learning journey, but I can remember how confused I was the first time I read something like 住んでいる町は… (The town I live in is blahblahblah). Because when you first start japanese you learn that the verb comes at the end of a sentence, the particles go after the things they relate to, and you’re good to go with that. So I was like ok, same as german, I just move the verb to the end. But actually it goes way deeper than that, and the sentence structure is nothing like german.
Rather than saying “verb comes at the end”, I think it’s more accurate to say “a verb always indicates the end of a clause”. I don’t think there is an exception to that rule in japanese. And this is actually a very powerful thing. Because going back to 住んでいる町は, it begins with a verb, yes but the verb must be the end of a clause, therefore 住んでいる must be a clause in itself, and indeed it is a subordinate clause that modifies the noun 町. This renders relative pronouns that are so common in French, English, German and other languages completely useless, and indeed there are none in Japanese.
Before learning Japanese, it had been 10 years since I wasn’t actively involved in learning a language (English, coming from French, so not very difficult), therefore my mind was very much wrapped around the fact that any language must have pretty much a similar structure, and this was the moment I realized the human mind was actually able to express the same thing in a seemingly completely backward way.
Although this subordinate structure now seems natural when I read/listen to japanese, it is still the number one thing that broadened my linguistsic horizon.
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But I try to just that. I actually defended most of your points.
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Yeah Japanese verb tenses behave a litttttle different than English in certain areas. Once you get used to which form to read where, it really opens up the length of sentence you are able to read!
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It was the other way around. Kunyomi originates in Japanese annotations of Chinese text and these situations where one Japanese word has multiple kanji associated with it come from cases where Chinese differentiated between things that Japanese used the same word for. The “added precision in writing” idea is an interpretation of how these kanji are used in the modern Japanese of the 21st century, but the origin of this practice is Japanese people getting used to seeing the same Japanese concept consistently expressed with one Chinese word in one context, and another Chinese word in a different context. So this is what e.g. the kanji used to write みる tells you. It doesn’t give you the story of みる, it tells you what classical Chinese concept would have been used to represent the idea that’s being written about.
It may also help to consider words that are related in Japanese but not identical, and map to different concepts in Chinese. For example, 麗しい (beautiful) is originally derived from an ancestor of 潤む (to be moist). You cannot understand this only from looking at kanji. Those only tell you how Chinese expressed these two concepts 2000 years ago.
(As a side note, 手紙 didn’t always mean “letter”. It used to refer to a scrap to take notes on etc. Letters aren’t called hand paper because kanji made it easier to create the word like that. The word literally referred to paper one had on hand. It also wasn’t necessary to create a word in the first place. There already were other words that were used to refer to letters, like 尺牘 based on Chinese and specifically referring to a letter written in Chinese, and 消息 used to refer to a letter written in 女手 aka hiragana).
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I know the history. I was referring to how it is used today.
テレビを見た vs テレビを観た
Are the same sentences and both are legal way to write that sentence. Second versions just add some more precision. And that reminds me of my biggest lightbulb moment:
Realisation that Japanese words have often wider scopes of meaning than Polish or English. 見る is good example. It cover the meaning of few different words in polish and English, or 聞く. It doesn’t mean it it got few meaning: it got one but wide.
Edit:
Actually that is easy to understand. English example:
How many meaning has word “get” to you? To me at the moment has basically one, but when I was starting to learning english it was nightmare. Because of that:
https://www.diki.pl/slownik-angielskiego?q=get
44 meanings if you try to understand that word in Polish…
That’s not true. If you want to read about history of the Japanese language (according to Japanese people), please read this book.
This book has an extensive history of the different scripts in Japanese, when they arose, and what changes were made to them along the way.
Although I would like to point out that we (all) may be wrong. Japanese history of it’s own language is sub-par at best. Especially it’s evolutionary phases.
In fact the book written by kukai (the man that many people firmly believe invented kana), was so big and complex that even now it hasn’t even been translated into modern Japanese. (It could hold a lot of answers to the language’s mysteries… shame)
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