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From:
Joe Martin Date: Wed Jan 20, 1999 5:54 pm Subject: Re: Typing SW in a Japanese Program | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Valerie, and all; You asked: I notice you mention Chinese characters, versus Japanese characters. You must forgive my ignorance...are they the same thing? I thought the characters were different (smile). I can answer this one; the characters are mostly the same--the Japanese borrowed existing Chinese ones in order to writetheir language. Evidently they weren't as ambitious as you -LOL- didn't want to invent their own writing system! All the characters are built up out of seven basic strokes--straight line horizontal & straight line verticle, hook, dot,.....etc. By adding these together in combinations you can make all the characters; some have over twenty strokes in them. (but then, they don't `rotate' like SW symbols) BUT!!! things aren't so simple. the Chinese have nine basic strokes, they include a couple of right-angle bent ones that the Japanese don't use--so along with the ones used by both languages, you'll see symbols in Chinese that are unlike any used in Japanese. The horrible thing is, though, that the Japanese don't write all their language in Characters; they also use a syllabary--40 (?) separate symbols that represent phonetically the sounds of the language. If we did this in English we would use a Character for "Write" and then spell out the "ing" in letters to get "writing." I know this sounds awkward, but it's even worse than it sounds; there are not one but TWO sets of syllable symbols! So.... for those who claim that SignWriting is hard to learn..... :-) Chinese doesn't have the syllabary, but you have to know over 3000 characters....... An option on either language might be to skip the characters and write the text out in roman letters--they can do that too! [although Chinese needs little diacritics over each word. >:( ] Using roman letters, and SignWritng symbols would be just like adding Spanish SL or any of the others that you've already done, I think. Joe | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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