Mixed writing systems (WAS: Newbie says hi)

>>It has a strange
>>writing system too, where the roots are written with an alphabet but the
>>suffixes are written with a syllabary, with each sign corresponding to a VC
>>combination!
>
>Now THAT's a great idea. I have long thought of what it would be like to use
>a mixed writing system like the Egyptians had - partly ideogram, partly
>phonetic. I believe the Chinese system is similar.
Actualy, thought chinese characher do include some phonetic information together with
ideograms, they do not do it through a mixed system, but by having a vague
"pronounciation tip" included in the ideogram (refer to
http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm for a good idea how of the system
works).

The japanese use of chinese characher (kanji) is closer to what you think. They
use kanji without any phonetic values to write the many words they borowed to
chinese language(which use could be vaguely considered similar to latin roots
in romance languages) , nouns, as well as verbs and adjective stem. They use a
separate sillabary (hiragana) to note all the "gramatical stuff" :
post-positions, inflexions... Note that this silabary is also used to subtitle
or even replace the chinese charachers that are too difficult to memorise.
And this would have be too easy. They also have a second sillabary (katakana) with
the exact same phonetic values, used for writing loan words, or for emphasys.

What make the use of chinese characters dificult in japanese, is that a single
kanji often have many readings: the "original" (yet modified through borowing
prosses) chinese reading, and the various pronounciation of the (some times
many) japanese concepts that fit into a single characher. only the context,
that is which gramatical function or which compound, allow to know the actual
pronounciation.

This pronounciation problem makes the system quite long to master. On the other
hand, once you know it, the reading is incredibly efficient. From the first
look, you can catch the main words, and then pay more attention to the
gramatical details. If you don't belevie that using ideograms is more efficient
to catch the meaning, just think of the closest thing to ideograms we have in
english: numbers. they do represent an idea, and not a pronounciation. Now tell
me, which one is easier to read:

two thousands three hundred sixty nine dollars and fifty five cents
or
2369.55$

You see?
Once you manage to learn the system, the whole language gets this easy and fast to
read. this is true for japanese and chinese, or any system using ideograms, but
the japanese add to this visual diversity for
1. words carrying the main ideas (kanji)
2. loan words (katakana)
3. sintaxic and gramatical construction (hiragana).

This truely helps the reader to analyse the text very quickly. I personaly consider
the japanese writing system to be the most efficient and confortable system to
the READer, though it is a bit harder to WRITE, and quite awfull to LEARN.

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