> From: Marco Cimarosti [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> This is not correct: I have found the term "Han" or "hanzi"
> in any kind of
> literature, not only on Unicode documentation.
"Hanzi" is a loan word which I have also often seen (usually written
in italics as it should be), but I never said I hadn't - only "Han", which I
have seen used to describe the Chinese people, but never their writing.
> I am not sure, however, that the two terms are 100% the same,
> in Western
> languages. "Hanzi" is less ethnically marked than "Chinese
> characters",
> regardless that they mean exactly the same thing.
Only in some eyes. In any case, what has "ethnic marking" to do
with it?
> (The choice between synonyms is rarely neutral, when politics
> are involved.
If this is the case in Chinese, it is a well kept secret. I have
challenged this list before to show me evidence of political issues
concerning the Chinese/Han thing - no evidence surfaced. The research I
have done indicates that the main reason behind the two ways to say
"Chinese" (zhongguo/han) is linguistic, not political. In any case, none of
this talk changes the fact that telling people that they need a "Han" font
to view Chinese is rather unhelpful.
> BTW, I notice that a single "Chinese" entry is listed. This
> should probably
> be split in several entries for the various Chinese languages (or
> "dialects", e.g. Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, etc.). This
> split may be handy
> because the different languages could need different information.
They don't. The joy of unification!
/|/|ike
