[David Starner (Re: [I18n]ISO 10646 Fonts and XFontSet question) writes:] >> Would it be possible to give a quick rundown on what the >> Monbushou rules are?
Well, a quick overview. - from the 1890s there were rumbles in educational circles in Japan about the difficulty of learning so many kanji, and the desirability to reduce the working set to a reasonable number. There were also concerns about the "spelling" af the kana representation of the readings of kanji -there were many proposals for reform, but they were invariably overridden by conservatives. An attempt at spelling reform about 1908 was withdrawn a couple of years later. - during the Occupation, the radicals had their day and (a) produced a set of 1850 kanji for daily use (Toyo kanji, i.e. Provisional kanji), and (b) a reformed method of writing readings which removed most of the irregularities. - under the reform, only these 1850 kanji were to be used in school texts, etc. This was policed by the Education Dept (Monbusho) (hence my "Monbusho rules" comment.) Newspapers voluntarily restricted themselves to using those kanji, or in some cases to add the readings (in ruby) if other kanji were used. - some decades later the 1850 were expanded to 1945 kanji, to become the "Jouyou kanji" (daily use kanji). An extra set of "jinmeiyou kanji" which can officially be used in personal names was also added. The limited set of kanji has survived pretty well. Only a small percentage of Japanese know many kanji outside that list, and often they are just for names. The main Japanese character set standard (now JIS X 0208-1997) was divided into two levels, and all the Toyo kanji were put in level 1 to aid limited implementations. When the Jouyou kanji came in there was a bit of shuffling to keep this rule going. HTH. Corrections and amplifications welcome. Jim -- Jim Breen [[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/] Computer Science & Software Engineering, Tel: +61 3 9905 3298 P.O Box 26, Monash University, Fax: +61 3 9905 5146 Clayton VIC 3800, Australia $B%8%`!&%V%j!<%s(B@$B%b%J%7%eBg3X(B _______________________________________________ I18n mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/i18n
