Re: Universal iconic language - (was - Sanskrit as computer programming language)?

From: Matthias Blume (find_at_my.address.elsewhere)
Date: 07/10/04 

Date: 09 Jul 2004 23:01:08 -0500

Joe Wright <joewwright@comcast.net> writes:

> As I remember it, from more than thirty years ago, we have..

This is now way off-topic, but here we go...

> Kanji Subset of Chinese ideograms

Correct.

> Hiri Gana Simplified Kanji with a Japanese flavor

It's "hiragana", and while they were (IIRC) developed by simplifying
kanji, they now bear little or no resemblence and form a phonetic
alphabet of syllables, which in fact is almost exactly isomorphic
to...

> Kata Kana Phonetic characters suitable for typewriters

These are no more and no less suitable for typewriters than hiragana.
Katakana (which were also developed by simplifying kanji -- and this
is far more obvious to the naked eye than it is in the case of
hiragana) are mainly used for emphasis and for writing most words that
were borrowed from other languages. One also sees them a lot in
advertising.

> Romaji Roman stuff the gaijin can read

Correct.

> Kanji doesn't have innate pronunciation.

In Chinese (so I was told) it does. In Japanese this got majorly
mixed up because a foreign writing system was force-matched to a
language that does not really fit. For that reason we now have at
least two readings (a Chinese-based and a Japanese-based) for each
character, with many more for some extreme cases.

> A particular ideogram might be recognized and understood all over
> Asia.

This will work only for a small subset of the characters.

> Its vocalization will be
> different almost anywhere you go. People from Saigon, Canton, Peking,
> Seoul and Tokyo can't talk to each other but they can read what the
> other writes.

This is a gross overstatement, I think. My guess is that especially
in Korea it is completely false -- at last for the younger generation
(assuming they did not study Chinese or Japanese in foreign-language
class). It works best between the different Chinese
languages/dialects. Between Japanese and Chinese it will be a major
stretch. At best people will be able to make a good guess about the
topic. Precise meaning will almost certainly be lost.

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