> Marco Cimarosti wrote:
> >
> > Part of this discrepancy may be due to different perspectives, i.e.
> > different reasons for counting. E.g., it doesn't make sense
> > to consider katakana and hiragana as two separate "scripts", apart
> > the fact that they are encoded in two different "blocks" in Unicode.
>
> I don't normally chime in because, eventhough I find alot of the
> conversation quite facinating, it is usually slightly over my head.
> However, your perspective must be from a language point of
> view if you say that hiragana and katakana are not separate scripts,
> you have never studied Japanese writing.

Or I did but had a different impression than you. :-)

(In fact, I admit that I don't speak Japanese, so I am aware that I need to
be corrected in a lot of details. However, I think I have a fair
understanding how the writing system works.)

> Eventhough they both originated as a shorted form of
> certain Chinese characters. They are quite different and
> eventhough they are quite interchanable have completly
> different usages. And from a language perspective, this
> would be like saying that the roman script and shorthand
> are not separate scripts.

This seems quite a poor comparison to me. Latin script and shorthand are
used *alternatively*: you either write in one system or the in the other.

On the other hand, hiragana and katakana are used *together* to write the
Japanese language. Whether a certain piece of text should be written in
hiragana or katakana (or kanji) is decided by the rules and traditions of
Japanese orthography.

A better comparison would be with Latin capital and small letters: the two
sets are used together to write (e.g.) English, and whether a certain phrase
should be in small letters ("a very united state"), in a mixture of capital
and small letters ("the United States") or in all capitals ("USA") is
decided by the rules of English orthography.

For what concerns typographic usage, an even better comparison is with
roman(*) and italic styles. Italics (like katakana) is used to write foreign
terms and to convey emphasis, while roman (like hiragana) is used to type
the rest of words. Of course, I know that the comparison is only partially
valid, as italics is not uses as often and consistently as katakana.

(*: BTW, I prefer to call the script "Latin" rather than "Roman" in order to
avoid confusion with the typographic term "roman" -- that is: the opposite
of "italic".)

> Which brings me to, in all the discussion, I saw
> no mention of Greggs Shorthand. I would consider this a
> script. It is still in common use and it is still being
> taught in many schools.

Yes, but it is not the *primary* orthography for English or any other
language. It is a script used only for the special purpose of gaining extra
speed when writing something down as dictation. So, IMHO, it should be ruled
out when answering a question such as: "How many scripts are in use today
(living languages) in the world?"

Similarly, I suggested to rule out Bopomofo, because it is a special-purpose
script only used for the phonetic transcription of Chinese.

(Actually no: Bopomomofo has also been used as the primary orthography for
the languages of some aboriginal languages of Taiwan, but it should probably
be ruled out anyway because, AFAIK, these orthographies are not current
anymore.)

> I guess that might be somewhat of the difference in using
> the word "script" vs. "writing system"

In fact, most people use the two terms quite interchangeably. What is the
suggested distinction?

> jmho,

And mine.

_ Marco