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[Nick Sabalausky]

"Nick Sabalausky" <a at a.a> wrote in message 
news:gpc4m6$30nt$1 at digitalmars.com...
> "Walter Bright" <newshound1 at digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
> news:gpc2ik$2t80$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>> That's one thing that's kind of nice about Japanese. Native words and 
>>> loanwords are written in different alphabets (sort of like uppercase vs 
>>> lowercase), so unlike English, you generally know if a word is a 
>>> properly-pronounced native word or a potentially-differently-pronounced 
>>> loanword. (Not that this is necessarily the original reason for the 
>>> separate native/foreign alphabets, but it's at least a nice benefit.)
>>
>> I don't see having 3 alphabets as having some sort of compelling 
>> advantage that remotely compares with the cost of learning 3 alphabets 
>> and 3 spellings for everything.
>
> Native Japanese words never use the Katakana alphabet, and loanwords never 
> use the Hiragana alphabet (those are the two phonetic alphabets). So in 
> Japanese, each word has at most 2 written forms: one using the 
> non-phonetic Chinese Kanji characters (ie, the third alphabet) and one 
> using just whichever -kana is appropriate. Also, suffixes and articles 
> (ie, not the "magazine" type) are always (to my knowledge) in Hiragana, 
> never one of the other two alphabets.
>
> Also, the "two" phonetic Japanese alphabets are really comparable to 
> either uppercase vs lowercase or cursive vs print. So in the same sense 
> that Japanese has three alphabets, we really have four.
>

Also, I'm not saying that their way is either better or worse overall. I'm 
just saying that it does at least have certain benefits.