Re: writing system

On Sun, 2 Jan 2005 06:24:27 -0600, Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...> wrote:
> Japanses actually uses three distinct nonalphabetic systems*: kanji
> (Chinese characters), and katakana and hiragana (both syllabic).
> These latter two are not used by non-Japanese at all,
If by "non-Japanese" you mean "people who do not live in Japan", then
you may be right, but if you mean "people who do not use the Japanese
language", then I think you're wrong; as far as I know, Ainu is
written with katakana. (I'm not sure whether other writing systems
also exist for that language.)

> and since the
> Communists reformed the characters, these have not been the same
> as those in Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan.
Many of them are still the same, though, merely not all. And to the
best of my knowledge, Korea has not (officially) simplified any
characters, so their hanja (when they do use them) should be the same
as those in, say, Taiwan (or other places using "traditional"
characters -- I'm not sure what the situation is like in Hong Kong,
traditionally a TC-using area but now that it's part of the PRC I
wonder whether they are switching to SC).

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
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