Re: intrinsic advantage of Latin alphabet over bopomofo (for Chinese)??

* Richard Herring wrote:

In message <et2e6c$1ms0@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Herman Rubin
<hrubin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
In article <IM+4mRHwWT8FFw+C@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Richard Herring <richard.herring@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In message <esps2e$m7c@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Herman Rubin
<hrubin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes

If Kana is adequate for Japanese, the small syllabary
involved would certainly be better for writing the
language.

Yet they insist on writing it with kanji. Why might that be, do you
think?

This one I happen to know. After the surrender in 1945,
it was seriously suggested that they get rid of the kanji
for other than reading old documents. But that was
rejected as "uncultured".

Nothing to do with disambiguating homophones, then?

But you're right about the "uncultured" argument, though that might be a
mistranslation of something more like "anti-cultural". It's so much a
part of the culture that abandoning kanji isn't "uncultured", it's
unthinkable.

Yeah, it's like asking Americans to give up cars.
--
A chrysanthemum by any other name would be easier to spell.
Peter Moylan in alt.usage.english
.

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