Re: complexity of scripts

<<

        But I have heard that in Hong Kong they add kou3 (mouth) to
the left of characters in cartoons (political or otherwise) to
indicate Cantonese words that don't have standard characters for
them.

>>
kou3 (Cantonese hau 35) is in many cases a radical that is added to a
character to make it a sound effect. Obviously, it is seen a lot in
Chinese translations of Japanese manga.

However, not all the nonstandard characters that represent words in
Cantonese that are not found in Mandarin, such as /mAt/ (what)
and /ge/ (genitive particle) have the mouth radical.


<<
This problem of names and characters is always interesting.
For example, Emei mountain -- location of yet another mountain temple
with associated marital arts -- is just two standard characters
pronounced "e mei" but each has the radical for mountain off to the
left.  It looks a little odd to me ('e' is 'wo3' "I" with mountain to
the left, 'mei' is 'mei2' "eyebrow" with a mountain to the left).
>>
Hmm, in the Nelson Kanji dictionary I have, there is a reasonable
expanse of characters in the "mountain" radical section that are all
defined as "(place name)" or "(mountain in China)" :P

Imperative