‘Is Japanese Getting Simpler, Easier or Just Worse?’

Writing in the New York Times, Emily Parker ponders the changes being wrought on the Japanese language by the internet and cell phones:

Americans may fret over the ways digital communications encourage sloppy grammar and spelling, but in Japan these changes are much more wrenching. A vertically written language seems to be becoming increasingly horizontal. Novels are being written and read on little screens. People have gotten so used to typing on computers that they can no longer write characters by hand. And English words continue to infiltrate the language.

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