"Nick Sabalausky" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]... > "Walter Bright" <[email protected]> wrote in message > news:[email protected]... >> Nick Sabalausky wrote: >>> That's one thing that's kind of nice about Japanese. Native words and >>> loanwords are written in different alphabets (sort of like uppercase vs >>> lowercase), so unlike English, you generally know if a word is a >>> properly-pronounced native word or a potentially-differently-pronounced >>> loanword. (Not that this is necessarily the original reason for the >>> separate native/foreign alphabets, but it's at least a nice benefit.) >> >> I don't see having 3 alphabets as having some sort of compelling >> advantage that remotely compares with the cost of learning 3 alphabets >> and 3 spellings for everything. > > Native Japanese words never use the Katakana alphabet, and loanwords never > use the Hiragana alphabet (those are the two phonetic alphabets). So in > Japanese, each word has at most 2 written forms: one using the > non-phonetic Chinese Kanji characters (ie, the third alphabet) and one > using just whichever -kana is appropriate. Also, suffixes and articles > (ie, not the "magazine" type) are always (to my knowledge) in Hiragana, > never one of the other two alphabets. > > Also, the "two" phonetic Japanese alphabets are really comparable to > either uppercase vs lowercase or cursive vs print. So in the same sense > that Japanese has three alphabets, we really have four. >
Also, I'm not saying that their way is either better or worse overall. I'm just saying that it does at least have certain benefits.
