Re: [csswg-drafts] [css-flexbox-1] The demonstrated non-English characters are Kanji(Chinese) characters (borrowed by Japanese) (#3957)

TL;DR: (please skip to the last paragraph.)

Kanji, or the Chinese character, is used by not a single language.

Of course, "one, two, three, four" is English (written in Latin alphabets; I don't say this is Latin). However, by simply looking at "一二三四", one cannot say for sure which language it is. It could be Japanese (pronounced ichi, ni, san, shi); it could be Mandarin (yi, er, san, si); it could be Cantonese (jat, ji, sam, sei); it could be Korean (il, i, sam, sa). It's a symbol of meaning, not pronunciation. That's how emojis work, no? A certain writing system should not be mistaken for some language. Latin letters are used by a huge number of languages, and we don't say these languages are Latin.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find a good (short) culture-neutral term for these characters. There are Kanji, Hanja, and Hanzi. Even though they refer to the same thing, English speakers will associate them to Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, respectively. (It's English to blame! Just joking :-)

"Chinese character" is technically more accurate. That's true. But in this context of giving an example, "Japanese" is okay. To get rid of further disputations, I suggest changing "一二三四" to something else not found in CKV, for example, 'wasei kanji' like 峠 榊 畑 辻 躾 働... ;-)

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Received on Thursday, 23 May 2019 15:23:43 UTC