Thanks. So how do people who read Chinese, Japanese, Korean, do the
Theravada chantings?? Or I guess they dont? Do they even study Pali?
or perhaps yes, but in roman characters?

It's just my grandma reads only Chinese, so I am trying to find
the "buddha jaya mangala gatha" for her in Chinese...I guess it's not
available.

Thanks anyway,
June

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "Stephen Hodge" <s.hodge@...> wrote:
> Dear June,
>
> You asked:
>
> > Can Pali be written using Chinese characters? If they can, does
anyone
> > know where I can get the character conversions document? (Like
how
> > we can convert between Roman characters and Thai characters)
> The quick answer is NO, not really.
>
> Chinese ideogram characters, as used in China, Japan, Korea and
formerly in
> Vietnam, are not alphabetic -- one might say that they primarily
represent
> ideas rather than sounds, so the writing system is totally different to
> alphabet-based scripts. The total range of characters exceeds
40,000 -- the
> giant Mojikyo font for scholars, available for free download, contains
over
> 100,000 characters, though it lists many old variants. Of course,
most
> modern users do not use or need such large numbers of characters.
Modern
> Chinese newspapers have a font range of about 7,500 characters.
The way the
> Japanese and Koreans use the characters is different -- they are
completely
> different languages to Chinese and need additional script notational
> methods. That is to say, they both use an additional syllabic script,
which
> is more like our alphabet, to write the bits they can't or don't use
> characters for -- though their sound systems are also inadequate for
an
> accuate notation of Pali etc. Hence they use a basic range of around
2000
> characters.
>
> The second problem for transcribing Pali or any other language with
Chinese
> characters is which language or pronunciation associated with the
characters
> is one to use ? Beijing / putonghua, Hongkong Cantonese, Hakka or
other
> Chinese pronunciation, Korean, Japanese etc ?
> Even if you settle on Beijing (Mandarin) pronunciation, the modern
Chinese
> sound system is fairly sparse -- some sounds found in Pali etc do not
occur
> in Chinese. Even if you do not use characters, but use the official
Chinese
> romanization system -- pinyin -- you will still have this problem. At
best,
> you will get a rough approximation but nothing useful for scholars.
>
> On the other hand, the ancient transcription of Pali and, more so,
Sanskrit
> into Chinese is of great interest to me. When the early medieval
Chinese
> scholar monks attempted to translate Buddhist texts into Chinese,
they
> sometimes had to transcribe phonetically Indian words as best they
could
> into Chinese. Things were actually easier for them then than would
be the
> case today, since medieval Chinese had a much richer sound system
than
> modern Chinese, but first the medieval sounds have to be
reconstructed ! I
> work quite a lot with Chinese Buddhist tantric texts that widely use
> transliterations of mantras etc -- characters used for their sound and
not
> their meaning. However, there was no standardized way of doing
this, and a
> range of up to 1000-1500 chacacters were used. As it happens, I
have just
> been updating a personal list of these characters, with their
recontructed
> medieval pronunciations and the Sanskrit sounds to which they
correspond in
> transliterations. This is an on-going project for me, since the range
of
> potential characters is virtually open-ended for this purpose.
>
> So the upshot of this is, according to your purposes, to use romanized
Pali
> as it is or get a Chinese person to roughly transcribe the sounds into
> characters, bearing in mind that speakers of other Chinese dialects
will
> mispronounce the words thus transcribed.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Best wishes,
> Stephen Hodge