On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 11:04:58PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: > On Thu, 2006-11-16 at 07:37 +0100, Daniel Baumann wrote: > > how are Asian telefone books sorted? Or are they transcripted from the > > symbolic into alphanumeric writing and then sorted "normally"? I'm eager > > to know... > > Japanese Kanji have a standardized stroke order: someone who really > knows Kanji can look at even an unfamiliar one and know which order the > strokes are made to draw the character. As a result, Kanji can be > sorted by number of strokes, and then by particular strokes with a > typical radix method.
Additionally, the Japanese really use four alphabets: Hiragana (for Japanese words or syllables that don't have a kanji character), Katakana (for loan words or to place emphasis), Kanji, and our latin alphabet for loan words that can't be written by use of katakana. Although you probably won't find the last one in a Japanese dictionary (though I can't be sure, never having seen one), you will be able to find words written in at least hiragana, possibly also katakana in one. These two alphabets contain "only" 104 characters, and have a particular sorting order. -- <Lo-lan-do> Home is where you have to wash the dishes. -- #debian-devel, Freenode, 2004-09-22 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
