tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Apr 14 15:45:23 2006

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Re: Japan Hol (Re: mangpu' or negh?)

Stephen A. Carter ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

[email protected] wrote:
> Ignoring the fact that written Japanese uses almost 2,000 kanji,

That's a bit of a red herring, because most of the kanji have multiple 
readings, many of the readings are polysyllabic, many of the readings 
are homophones, and there are a heck of a lot more than 2,000 
characters.  (The "almost 2,000" is just the number of the minimum set 
of characters to be covered by compulsory education.  College students, 
for example, need to know easily two or three times as many, and large 
character dictionaries have entries for over 50,000.  I translate 
Japanese for a living, and I couldn't do my job if I knew only 2,000 kanji.)

> it also uses 
> two forms of kana (hiragana and katakana), each of which contains 46 symbols. 

True, but the two forms each represent exactly the same set of sounds -- 
sort of like cursive vs. block-printed letters in English.

Your point that Japanese uses a lot more than 26 syllables is valid, though.


-- 
Stephen A. Carter
[email protected]
Nagoya, Japan

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