Could someone please explain why someone would use hiragana instead of the
regular kanji?

For instance, we have a character for nagai - 長い, but examples using ながい can
also be found in dictionaries and on the internet. Is the hiragana used for
emphasis, or is it just the author's taste?

Example (Tanaka Corpus):

> このながい不況の結果、社会不安が起こるかもしれない。
>
> Social unrest may come about as a result of this long recession.

Another example found: おさない instead of 幼い

> 子供はおさないときに母をしゃぶり、大きくなって父親をしゃぶる。
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2012-07-03T19:20:02.383
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2012-07-09T18:41:23.137
2020-06-17T08:18:27.500
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question
kanji
Why did the author use hiragana instead of kanji in the following examples? (長い,幼い)
For the first example `ながい`, I can think of a two reasons why: 1) The person
who entered the text didn't really think about it or didn't care, or 2) There
are two versions `永い` and `長い`, and the author didn't know which one to use
(this probably isn't the case, but you never know). However, there could be
other reasons, and as mentioned in the comments "no one but the author knows
the actual reason".

For `おさない`, did you know there are two readings for `幼い`? There is `いとけない` and
`おさない`, I don't know if that played a role in the author using hiragana, but
it is something to think about (`いとけない` is generally not used very much any
more, but you will still see it on occasion).

Also, it is good to know that in some situations, 漢字 are prohibited. For
example, [常用外漢字]{じょうようがいかんじ} will generally not be used in newspapers because
they are not part of the official set of characters to be taught. Also, words
like `障害` are usually written as `障がい` recently because `害` has a negative
meaning. Also, `子供` is written as `子ども` and there is some controversy over
this, but I will leave the reason behind that a mystery.
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2012-07-04T05:24:00.007
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2012-07-04T06:34:33.803
2012-07-04T06:34:33.803
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answer