From: "Philip Hacker" <prohackr@hotmail.com>
To: shakudo@hotmail.com, fanfic@fanfic.com
Subject: Re: [FFML][Possibly Spam]Chi
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1998 17:28:52 PDT

<snip>

Incorrect. Until about the sixth century, the Japanese had no concept 

of 

written language. When they first contacted the Chinese, they borrowed 
the Chinese characters because it was the only writing system that they 
knew. The Kanji, however, proved woefully inadequate for Japanese 
because they could not represent the conjugation of verbs or declention 
of adjectives, or several other such grammatical constructs. To 
circumvent this problem, about fifty Kanji were selected to represent 
specific sounds. Over time, these Kanji became simplified and, by the 
ninth century, became the Hiragana and Katakana scripts that we know 
today. Modern Kanji have both kun and on readings for most of the 
characters.



Phil

prohackr@hotmail.com

I'd like to know where you get your information from. The japanese 
syllabary was developed BEFORE they saw the first kanji. Kana came 
through Japan much the same way the japanese came through Japan. From 
China through Korea. The chinese didn't have the jouyou kanji (as the 
japanese call it) in the sixth century. They used a system of ideograms 
much like egyptian heiroglyphs. Then, because the japanese took only the 
fifty ideograms that they needed DID evolve the first kana. The chinese, 
however, evolved their writing system *differently* from the japanese, 
because the two were relatively isolated. The rest of what I said 
earlier IS true. Do you want to know where I get MY information?

Sugawara, M. _Nihongo: A Japanese approach to Japanese._
Smith, P. _Japan._

- Shakudo - I showed you mine, now you show me yours.

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