From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Jun 12 08:12:22 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id IAA27686 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Fri, 12 Jun 1998 08:12:22 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from smtp02.primenet.com (daemon@smtp02.primenet.com [206.165.6.132]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id IAA27664 for ; Fri, 12 Jun 1998 08:12:15 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from tlambert@usr09.primenet.com) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by smtp02.primenet.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) id IAA15230; Fri, 12 Jun 1998 08:12:02 -0700 (MST) Received: from usr09.primenet.com(206.165.6.209) via SMTP by smtp02.primenet.com, id smtpd015154; Fri Jun 12 08:11:51 1998 Received: (from tlambert@localhost) by usr09.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA08464; Fri, 12 Jun 1998 08:11:46 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199806121511.IAA08464@usr09.primenet.com> Subject: Re: internationalization To: frankch@waru.life.nthu.edu.tw (Chen Hsiung Chan) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 15:11:46 +0000 (GMT) Cc: itojun@iijlab.net, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <19980612124245.33715@waru.life.nthu.edu.tw> from "Chen Hsiung Chan" at Jun 12, 98 12:42:45 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > >The point is not a reduction in an alphabetic symbol space, as in > > >your A-F example. > > >A switch from Kanji to Kana would not damage the ability to represent > > >any Japanese words; it's a switch from an ideogrammatic to an > > >alphabetic representation. > > > > bzzzz, you are wrong. We Japnaese can't live without Kanji. > > Kanji is not an extra character sets. Kanji is mandatory > > character set for us, just like G-Z for you. Believe me, > > I speak and write Japanese every day :-) > > That's also true for Chinese. We can not live with only > phonetic symbols, whether that be bopomofo or pinyin or > anything else. This is still not valid for the A-F example. What you are complaining about is not the lack of symbols, but the lack of diacritical markings; the use of "radicals" in Kanji servers the equivalent purpose. An English analogy is the meter in poetry, which can not be represented without invented diacritical marks: - | - | - | - | The boy stood on the burning deck - | - | - | | His feet were full of blisters Alternately, you can use dipthongs (such as the "ae" in "Gilbrae") to make written kana/bopomofo/pinyan pseudo phonetic, like English. I would discourage this, for reasons previously stated, and use the less intrusive punctuational methods. For example, in written Romaji, vowel extension is generally done via hyphenated repetition: oba-san oba-a-san Romanized Chinese requires syllabic hypenation and intonational markings: / - _ Ni-hou-ma ie: it's possible to do. Definition of diacritics is (obviously, from my examples of Western markup schemas 8-)) better left to native speakers to decide. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message