Bruce Thomson wrote: > I am belatedly trying to come up to speed on SC/TC, and > I see that it does have a lot of merit. But I think that the > notion of "equivalent characters" is really trying to take > this game too far. There are two words ways to write "egg" > in Japanese, pronounced the same, but one is written > with two characters, and one with only one character. Are > going to call these words "equivalent"? Sounds like you > would like to do that, if I understand your concept. >
I find the notion of comparing TC/SC equivalence to Japanese Kanji/Hiragana/Katakana equivalence rather compelling and far-stretched to an extent. Having gone through an institutionalized form of Chinese-language education exclusively in SC with hardly any opportunity (or neccessity) to learn TC, I must say that if not for the availability of TC/SC conversion programs (e.g. NJStar), it would be a mammoth task for me to communicate with my Taiwanese friends over e-mail, since my knowledge of TC characters is almost as sparse as my knowledge of Arabic (i.e. practically non-existent). Compare this with Japanese; I do not think you can find two Japanese-speaking individuals, one having knowledge of "egg" in Kanji ONLY and one having knowledge of "egg" in Hiragana ONLY. Chances are most Japanese-speakers know both equivalent forms. Chinese-speakers may not. regards
