Re: OT: French

On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:34:49 +0100, Lozzo <lozzo@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Ace says...
On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:25:56 +0100, Lozzo <lozzo@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

All Chinese languages use the same characters meaning the same things,
they just say them differently. Someone who only speaks Mandarin would
be able to read anything written by anyone speaking only any other
Chinese language.

As would Japanese people. The reverse is not true, but most Japanese
would be able to read, or decipher, about 80% of normal written
Chinese.

I wasn't aware of that, thanks.

The Japanese use three distinct scripts: the first is Kanji, which is
the same as the Chinese use, but which only includes a couple of
thousand characters as standard.

Other Japanese words are usually written in Hiragana, with Katakana
now mainly used for 'borrowed' foreign words. Both of these two are
phonetical scripts with characters representing individual sounds like
the Roman, Cyrillic and other alphabets.

In normal written Japanese all three scripts are used together,
sometimes with non-standard kanji also being subtitled in Hiragana. So
while the nips can read much of normal Chinese, most chinese people
wouldn't have a hope when confronted with Japanese writing.

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