> On Thu, 2006-11-16 at 10:38 +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote: >> >> 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. > > Both kana are syllabaries,
Right. > not alphabets, but since they are short, you > are correct that they are easily sorted with normal radix methods. > That's why I didn't mention them. The question was about names, which > are pretty much always written with Kanji in Japanese. I could be wrong; but I thought people were talking about dictionaries. Those usually don't contain names... > Katakana are satisfactory for all loan words; No, they are not. Almost all syllables in Japanese consist of a consonant followed by a vowel; it is impossible to write down syllables that end with a consonant (except, perhaps, if it ends with the consonant n, but that's a special case). For example, it's impossible to write down your name or mine with Japanese kana -- at least if it's to be pronounced correctly. I'm aware that the Japanese usually write down a fair approximation for foreign names in katakana, but sometimes that's not enough. -- <Lo-lan-do> Home is where you wash the dishes #debian-devel -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
