Why are there so many different words with the same pronunciation in Japanese?


Why does Japanese have so many words with different meanings which have the
same pronunciation? For example, there are at least 80 different words which
are pronounced "ko" , at least 45 for "ka", at least 48 for "kyū" and so on. I
know that probably most languages have several different meanings for the same
pronunciation (for example in Spanish we say "tomar" for "to drink" and "to
get" which aren't even remotely related) or in English they use "to play" for
playing an instrument or playing a game (which are very different actions in
my opinion, and in Spanish we use 2 different words, namely "tocar" for an
instrument and "jugar" for a game), but in Japanese this is taken to a next
level. Is there any particular historic reason or some other kind of reason
for this?




It is because of the influx of Chinese language words. In the original
Chinese, these words with similar consonant+vowel pronunciations were
distinguished by "tones" superimposed on those pronunciations. However, those
tones were dropped as the words were imported into Japanese (or dropped as
they entered Korean and then came to Japan).

In Japanese those imported words are called [漢語]{かんご}. The native Japanese
(including words which may have been introduced from native Korean) are called
[大和]{やまと}ことば.

You will notice that Yamato kotoba are not easily confused with each other as
that family of closely related non-tonal native languages which eventually
became today's Yamato kotaba just used more syllables to disambiguate when
necessary.

A related fact is that written language, which by nature includes more higher
level concepts, which historically are associated with 漢語, tends to be
difficult to read without the use of kanji due to their ambiguity when
represented only by phonemes. In Korea, which has dropped Kanji in favor of a
purely phonetic writing system, reading texts densely packed with 漢語(*) is
somewhat difficult, and there is always some talk about re-introducing Kanji.

(* or whatever 漢語 are called in Korean).




It is because of the influx of Chinese language words. In the original
Chinese, these words with similar consonant+vowel pronunciations were
distinguished by "tones" superimposed on those pronunciations. However, those
tones were dropped as the words were imported into Japanese (or dropped as
they entered Korean and then came to Japan).

In Japanese those imported words are called [漢語]{かんご}. The native Japanese
(including words which may have been introduced from native Korean) are called
[大和]{やまと}ことば.

You will notice that Yamato kotoba are not easily confused with each other as
that family of closely related non-tonal native languages which eventually
became today's Yamato kotaba just used more syllables to disambiguate when
necessary.

A related fact is that written language, which by nature includes more higher
level concepts, which historically are associated with 漢語, tends to be
difficult to read without the use of kanji due to their ambiguity when
represented only by phonemes. In Korea, which has dropped Kanji in favor of a
purely phonetic writing system, reading texts densely packed with 漢語(*) is
somewhat difficult, and there is always some talk about re-introducing Kanji.

(* or whatever 漢語 are called in Korean).

