Re: NATLANG: Dravidian langs really *are* cool!

On Tue, 18 Mar 2008 23:59:13 +0800, Eugene Oh <un.doing@...> wrote:

>I pretty much disagree with the comments on the Japanese writing
>system! It is simply a matter of getting used to and familiar with it.
>In the same way, you can say r > n > h > b with one extra stroke at
>each step. R's, n's, m's, u's and sometimes even c's and a's are hard
>to tell apart in cursive scribble too.
>
>It doesn't seem fair to me to judge on an Anglocentric platform. :-)
>
>Eugene
Maybe not, though ISTR that some of the katakana *are* very similar.  I only
looked at it for a little bit, but I know that there are a couple characters
there that are distinguished only by the direction of the stroke -- and in a
way that isn't all that apparent if you're not writing with a brush.

Overall, though, I think the kana are a good writing system.  I don't
particularly like the kanji.  I'm studying Mandarin now, and I see how
logograms work beautifully for Chinese -- though even there it has some
kinks and a few disadvantages -- but from what I know of their application
to Japanese, it just seems like would make reading quite complicated, since
AFAIK nearly every character will end up with multiple readings, and the
already enormous memorization task of learning it just gets that much more
complicated as you add more readings.

That's MHO, of course.  The Japanese seem to get along fine with their
writing systems, so if it works, it works.  Far be it from me to tell them
how to write -- I don't even speak their language.

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