Doug Ewell wrote: > A *script* like Latin or Cyrillic typically has many more > characters than any one language will ever use. > An *alphabet* is, by definition, language-specific. Hhmmm... We probably all agree that Chinese, Japanese and Korean share the "CJK script". But would you say, following your definition, that the subset of the CJK Script used to write Mandarin in Mainland China should be called "The Chinese Simplified *Alphabet*"? I know that the term "alphabet" is used in a similar manner in information theory, but this doesn't sound very fine to me when talking about writing systems. My current understanding of the two terms is the following: - "Script" is a generic term meaning a writing system of any kind, its inventory of signs and its orthographic rules. - "Alphabet" is a specific class of scripts, whose principal characteristic is that tends to map each sign to one of the language's phonemes. It opposes to, e.g., a "syllabic" script, which maps longer sequences of phonemes (often in the form consonant+vowel) and a "logographic" script which maps signs to morphemes ("words" or parts of words). Someone subdivides this definition of "alphabet" in various classes according to whether all phonemes are equally mapped to symbols, or only some of them (e.g. an alphabet that privileges consonants over vowels is also called an "abjad", I think). _ Marco
- Re: Perception that Unicode is 16-bit (was: Re: Surrogate... Peter_Constable
- Re: Perception that Unicode is 16-bit (was: Re: Surrogate... Joel Rees
- Re: Perception that Unicode is 16-bit (was: Re: Surrogate... Joel Rees
- Re: Perception that Unicode is 16-bit (was: Re: Surrogate... Peter_Constable
- RE: Perception that Unicode is 16-bit (was: Re: Surrogate... Ayers, Mike
- Re: Perception that Unicode is 16-bit (was: Re: Surrogate... John Cowan
- Re: Perception that Unicode is 16-bit (was: Re: Surrogate... Tex Texin
- RE: Perception that Unicode is 16-bit (was: Re: Surrogate... Ayers, Mike
- RE: Perception that Unicode is 16-bit (was: Re: Surrogate... Kenneth Whistler
- Re: Perception that Unicode is 16-bit (was: Re: Surrogate... Joel Rees
- RE: Perception that Unicode is 16-bit (was: Re: Surrogate... Marco Cimarosti
- RE: Perception that Unicode is 16-bit (was: Re: Surrogate... Peter_Constable
- Re: Perception that Unicode is 16-bit (was: Re: Surrogate... John Cowan
- Re: Perception that Unicode is 16-bit (was: Re: Surrogate... Michael Everson
- RE: Perception that Unicode is 16-bit (was: Re: Surrogate... Marco Cimarosti
- RE: Perception that Unicode is 16-bit (was: Re: Surrogate... Michael Everson
- Re: Perception that Unicode is 16-bit (was: Re: Surrogate... DougEwell2
- RE: Perception that Unicode is 16-bit (was: Re: Surrogate... Peter_Constable
- Re: Perception that Unicode is 16-bit (was: Re: Surrogate... Kenneth Whistler