Nick Sabalausky wrote:
"Walter Bright" <newshou...@digitalmars.com> wrote in message
news:gpc2ik$2t8...@digitalmars.com...
Nick Sabalausky wrote:
That's one thing that's kind of nice about Japanese. Native words and
loanwords are written in different alphabets (sort of like uppercase vs
lowercase), so unlike English, you generally know if a word is a
properly-pronounced native word or a potentially-differently-pronounced
loanword. (Not that this is necessarily the original reason for the
separate native/foreign alphabets, but it's at least a nice benefit.)
I don't see having 3 alphabets as having some sort of compelling advantage
that remotely compares with the cost of learning 3 alphabets and 3
spellings for everything.
Native Japanese words never use the Katakana alphabet, and loanwords never
use the Hiragana alphabet (those are the two phonetic alphabets).
There are situations in Japanese where you use katakana natively.
Onomatopoeia, for instance, and company names.
I know that, when introducing someone's name in writing, an author will
sometimes follow the kanji version of the name with a phonological
representation of the name. Does this typically use hiragana, or would
you use katakana for that as well?
