On Wed, 2002-08-07 at 14:56, Tatsuo Ishii wrote:
> > > Don't forget that 128 is for *bytes*, not for characters(this is still
> > > ture with 7.3). In CJK(Chinese, Japanese and Korean) single character
> > > can eat up to 3 bytes if the encoding is UTF-8.
> >
> > True, but in those languages a typical name would be many fewer
> > characters than it is in Western alphabets, no? I'd guess (with
> > no evidence though) that the effect would more or less cancel out.
>
> That's only true for "kanji" characters. There are alphabet like
> phonogram characters called "katakana" and "hiragana". The former is
> often used to express things imported from foreign languages (That
> means Japanse has more and more things expressed in katakana than
> before).
Is this process irreversible ?
I.e. will words like "mirku" or "taikin katchuretchu" (if i remember
correctly my reading form an old dictionary, these were imported words
for "milk" and "chicken cutlets") never get "kanji" characters ?
BTW, it seems that even with 3 bytes/char tai-kin is shorter than
chicken ;)
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Hannu