John Jenkins wrote:

>
> On May 11, 2004, at 4:48 AM, Marco Cimarosti wrote:
>
> > Luciano Perondi wrote:
> >> I think that in chinese could have the role of "atoms" also the basic
> >> strokes (bi hua), that form the elements such as "¤k" and "°¨".
> >
> > But the brush strokes do not bear any recognizable function. Such an
> > analysis is only visual, not functional. See my reply to P.T. Daniels.
> >
>
> Actually, I would say that the individual characters are the atoms of
> Chinese, the radical and phonetic elements the protons and neutrons,
> and the brush-strokes are the quarks.
>
> How's that for being unhelpful?

You left out the electrons.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...