At 04:37 AM 12/12/2003, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

>This involves nothing but a very strange definition of "script." No one
>denies that there are four or more components of the Japanese writing
>system, each with its own function. But to call the components "scripts"
>is nothing short of bizarre.

How would *you* define or use the term 'script'?

I don't have a problem with the idea that the Japanese writing system uses
characters from four different scripts. A script is a superset of signs,
and it isn't unusual for a language to be written with a subset (just as
English is written with the subset of the Latin script). Japanese happens
to be written with the whole set of two scripts (katakana and hiragana) and
a subset of two other scripts (Han characters -- or whatever you want to
call them -- and Latin). What different term do you think should be used in
describing these relationships of particular writing systems to supersets
of related signs?

John Hudson

Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com
Vancouver, BC tiro@...

What was venerated as style was nothing more than
an imperfection or flaw that revealed the guilty hand.
- Orhan Pamuk, _My name is red_