RE: Questions/comments about glossary and FAQ entries (i18n-actions#25)

Hi Ken,

 

Thanks for this.

 

I think this looks good. I’ll let you know if our WG has any additional comments (our teleconferences are Thursdays at 7 AM Pacific)

 

Addison

 

From: Ken Whistler <kenwhistler@sonic.net> 
Sent: Monday, July 24, 2023 4:08 PM
To: Ken Lunde <ken.lunde@gmail.com>; Addison Phillips <addisoni18n@gmail.com>
Cc: Editorial Committee <edcom@unicode.org>; Internationalization Working Group <public-i18n-core@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Questions/comments about glossary and FAQ entries (i18n-actions#25)

 

Addison,

O.k., on *this* one, since I hold the pen on the Glossary page, I've taken your and Ken Lunde's feedback under advisement, and have a new draft you can check. This updates "kana", but also "kanji", "katakana", and "hiragana" in a systematic way, and adds a new entry for "romaji".

https://www.unicode.org/glossary/index-new.html#kana

If nobody objects or has any further suggestions for corrections, I'll make that live in a day or so.

--Ken

On 7/24/2023 2:09 PM, Ken Lunde wrote:

Addison,

 

About katakana, it is also used for expressing animal and plant names, and for emphasis (comparable to italic for Western scripts). About hiragana, it is commonly used as fallback for Japanese words when the corresponding kanji is either difficult to remember or obscure.

 

Regards...

 

-- Ken





On Jul 24, 2023, at 13:49, Addison Phillips  <mailto:addisoni18n@gmail.com> <addisoni18n@gmail.com> wrote:

 

 

The issues we found were:

 

Term: Kana

Location: https://unicode.org/glossary/#kana

Current Definition: The name of a primarily syllabic script used by the Japanese writing system. It comes in two forms,  <https://unicode.org/glossary/#hiragana> hiragana and  <https://unicode.org/glossary/#katakana> katakana. The former is used to write particles, grammatical affixes, and words that have no  <https://unicode.org/glossary/#kanji> kanji form; the latter is used primarily to write foreign words.

 

We found this definition to be potentially confusing. Generally several of our group think that it would be clearer to say that “Kana” is a collective term for the two syllabic scripts used (along with kanji and romaji) by the Japanese writing system. Also, the usage of katakana is not limited to words of foreign origin and maybe some wording might be used to indicate this.