> Thus Japanese had settled on having few syllable sounds _before_ there was any way to write them down, so their syllables _can't_ have been limited by their script (at least initially).
You might be underestimating just how huge an influence Chinese has had on Japanese:
Japanese (as well as Korean and Vietnamese) imported Chinese vocabulary en masse, including a gloss of Chinese translation. That made Japanese much more homophonic since the tones got dropped in the process.
Just compare the kunyomi (native) and onyomi (Chinese-derived) readings for some Kanji and you'll see that the onyomi readings are usually single syllables.
"For example, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines (where borrowings from English are common), over half the words in newspapers and 60% of the words in science magazines."
That said, I don't really agree with GP's contention that using Kanji makes Japanese have a simple sound system. Chinese has a somewhere richer sound system even though it invented the characters (especially if you count tones), and Spanish and Italian have very simple sound systems even though they're written with alphabets.
You might be underestimating just how huge an influence Chinese has had on Japanese:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Xenic_pronunciations#Ling...
Japanese (as well as Korean and Vietnamese) imported Chinese vocabulary en masse, including a gloss of Chinese translation. That made Japanese much more homophonic since the tones got dropped in the process.
Just compare the kunyomi (native) and onyomi (Chinese-derived) readings for some Kanji and you'll see that the onyomi readings are usually single syllables.
"For example, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines (where borrowings from English are common), over half the words in newspapers and 60% of the words in science magazines."
That said, I don't really agree with GP's contention that using Kanji makes Japanese have a simple sound system. Chinese has a somewhere richer sound system even though it invented the characters (especially if you count tones), and Spanish and Italian have very simple sound systems even though they're written with alphabets.