> >That's very interesting. Even though it doesn't use spaces, Japanese > >does > >have a pretty clear concept of a word - or maybe they just made it up > >to > >teach to foreigners ;-) > > Don't know about that... But I do remember that my students (I taught > ESL to some Japanese girls, for a year, about 10 yrs ago or so) used to > have those "funny" dictionaries... When I tried to understand how the > dictionary was arranged, they told me it was according to the *number > of strokes* drawn in a particular ?hieroglyph? used for a word (or > phrase)... I found that method even more intimidating than Roget's > dictionary of synonyms/antonyms before it went over to alphabetical > listings... As bad, indeed, as the yellow pages in the phone-book or a > 'putert search (how on earth do you *begin* to guess???)
The "hieroglyphs" are called kanji, and what they look like doesn't have any clear relation to how they're pronounced (plus they tend to have several different pronounciations depending on context), so if you see a kanji you don't know and want to know what it means or how it's pronounced, you have to find it in a dictionary only based on what it looks like, i.e. number of strokes, component shapes, etc. I only know about 100 kanji, so fortunately I don't have to use a kanji dictionary yet. There are also dictionaries that go the other way and are more similar to ours - you find the word's pronounciation (written in the syllabic alphabet, so the dictionary is arranged alphabetically like the English ones) and the dictionary tells you the meaning, corresponding kanji etc. Weronika To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
