> Presumably the spoken Japanese language predates the writing system
Its roots do, naturally, but the kanji compounds I mentioned don't. They're words made from kanji, not words that kanji were created to write down.
It's a hugely messy topic and I'm no expert, but the broad strokes are that Japanese derives from an "original" language (which had no writing system), which was greatly affected by multiple waves of Chinese influence over many centuries, and much of what seems complex in Japanese is the result. Anyway suffice to say that my comment was about Japanese today, not 1500 years ago before there was a writing system ;)
Its roots do, naturally, but the kanji compounds I mentioned don't. They're words made from kanji, not words that kanji were created to write down.
It's a hugely messy topic and I'm no expert, but the broad strokes are that Japanese derives from an "original" language (which had no writing system), which was greatly affected by multiple waves of Chinese influence over many centuries, and much of what seems complex in Japanese is the result. Anyway suffice to say that my comment was about Japanese today, not 1500 years ago before there was a writing system ;)