Kenneth Whistler wrote: > > Doug Ewell asked, on this hopelessly wandering thread: > > > (Is > > there an English-language term for the subset of the CJK ideographic script > > that is used by a given language, say, Japanese?) > > Well, since "kanji" by now has been borrowed into English, at least among > a rather large class of specialists who are at least somewhat knowledgeable about > Japanese, I would say that the relevant English-language phrase to cover > this is "the Japanese kanji". I know, not a good, core English word like > "alphabet" or "syllabary" or "abjad", is it. But wait. Hmmm. alpha, beta, gamma... > syllaba, syllabae, syllabarum ... syllabé, syllabídzo ... > > *wanders off muttering to himself* > And not only "kanji". These terms are all used by specialists: * 'Hanzi' in Beijing Chinese (with reference to "American English", "ha" as in 'hard'; "zi" pronounced like "tsz" where "z" here represents a vowel sound similar to English "z" with the tongue tip lowered slightly, near also to English "r"); * 'Kanji' in Cantonese Chinese (kahn jee; "k" as in 'can', "a" as in 'father', "jee" as in 'jeep'); * 'Kanji' in Japanese (pronunciation similar to that in Cantonese); * 'Hanja' in Korean (Han as in Beijing Chinese, "ja" as in English "jar"; * 'chuhan' in Vietnamese [real Chinese chars]; * 'chunom' in Vietnamese [similar to (i.e., analogical) Chinese characters]. But for core English vocabulary, I don't think "Chinese ideographs", "Japanese ideographs", "Korean ideographs", or "Vietnamese ideographs" would be objectionable terms to anyone ... that is, to anyone who doesn't find the term "ideograph" objectionable.
