> Japanese-speaking people have trouble understanding each other?
Probably no more so than speakers of other languages.
What I meant is that written Japanese often conveys information that will be lost if the text is read aloud as it is written, as words written differently are often pronounced the same.
English has similar cases, such as “right,” “write,” and “rite.” But Japanese has many, many more. For example, the words 壮観, 送還, 相姦, 相関, 相観, 挿管, 創刊, and 総監 are all pronounced sōkan, but they mean, respectively, a grand sight, repatriation, incest, correlation, physiognomy, intubation, start of publication, and inspector general. When the words are seen, their meaning is immediately clear. When they are heard, the listener must infer which meaning is intended from the context, and often the context is insufficient.
Radio announcers, when reading aloud a text, will sometimes explain the kanji with which a word was written. Audiobook narrators probably don’t feel they have the authority to do so.
It's not a fair comparison (because these are chosen to be homonyms in Japanese), but interestingly, all but one of them are also regular Korean words and they all sound different:
I think he is saying that in writing, Japanese allows you to be expressive in ways that take advantage of the written medium, and a spoken version of the same text loses those text-only expressive features.
Yes, they absolutely do. You have to see it to believe it.
The language is full of homonyms, for instance.
Misunderstandings occur and then there is a back and forth along the pattern of "No, I don't mean the GENSHI (原子, atom) of GENBAKU (原爆, atom bomb). I mean GENSHI (原資, capital) as in SHIKIN (資金, funds). Okane no koto (having to do with money)." "Aaa... naruhodo".
They also often cannot read the names of people and places. It is simply not possible. If you don't know, the best you can do is form several plausible hypotheses, all of which could be incorrect due to some semi-arbitrary assignment.
What other sibling comments is true, but it's worth noting that there are cases where spoken Japanese can be ambiguous, and people disambiguate by... mimick-writing in their palm with their finger.
Probably no more so than speakers of other languages.
What I meant is that written Japanese often conveys information that will be lost if the text is read aloud as it is written, as words written differently are often pronounced the same.
English has similar cases, such as “right,” “write,” and “rite.” But Japanese has many, many more. For example, the words 壮観, 送還, 相姦, 相関, 相観, 挿管, 創刊, and 総監 are all pronounced sōkan, but they mean, respectively, a grand sight, repatriation, incest, correlation, physiognomy, intubation, start of publication, and inspector general. When the words are seen, their meaning is immediately clear. When they are heard, the listener must infer which meaning is intended from the context, and often the context is insufficient.
Radio announcers, when reading aloud a text, will sometimes explain the kanji with which a word was written. Audiobook narrators probably don’t feel they have the authority to do so.