• existentialspicerack [she/her,they/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      yes. the first comment doesn't even use the alphabet that shares characters with chinese, and the overlap is more like latin and russian alphabets than english and spanish alphabets from what I remember. it has been a few years. japan has three alphabets; two phonetic, one picturey. (technical linguistics term) only that one shares any chinese characters.

        • existentialspicerack [she/her,they/them]
          ·
          4 years ago

          oh fuck only a cursory look

          and yeah, technically, but its descended from in form, not strictly borrowed from. different. though im not up enough on linguistics to argue farther.

      • kilternkafuffle [any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        japan has three alphabets; two phonetic, one picturey

        Technically, all three are writing systems, not alphabets. Kanji (Chinese characters) are logographs - each stands for a word or morpheme (a somewhat autonomous part of a word). Hiragana and Katakana are syllabries - each character stands for a syllable (or vowel), not a letter.

        In alphabetic writing systems, each character is a letter, which typically represents a sound, but may also vary in pronunciation or be silent, depending on the word (and language).

        Hiragana and Katakana are evolutions based off simplified versions of Chinese characters (simplifications whose origin is also in China) - but aren't used by any other language besides Japanese.

        Japanese Kanji diverge from Chinese Hanzi and have many completely unique Japanese pronunciations and uses, but there are many equivalents between the two. E.g., 愛 is pronounced ai and means "love" in both Chinese and Japanese.

        • existentialspicerack [she/her,they/them]
          ·
          4 years ago

          oh the kanji I count as being totally related. the hirigana and katakana tho, idk ive poked at japanese a bunch and chinese a little and I can see how they're in the right family, but the difference is obvious at a glance, was even before I spoke a word of either language. not that I'm fluent.

          right, yes, not technically an alphabet, but you know what I mean, and I fail at semantics. ive been on the stupid internet for the last while, and just fudged to simplicity rather than saying 'logograph'. or remembering the word >.>