Re: How is Han numeral numbering supposed to work?

First of all, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chiense, Japanese and Korean may use different unicode code point for those chinese number characters- see "'cjk-ideographic'- varients of character list" section in
http://people.netscape.com/ftang/paper/unicode16/part2.html

Second, there are two forms of numbering characters- one for more formal writing one for less formal writing, both are used in Chinese, depend on the context

Third, as you mention- they may have different way to handle "zero" and the first "one" between region- I didn't consider that in the current mozilla implementation yet.

In summary- we should not have only one id for this numbering system- it need more details id to distinguish between them.

てんどうりゅうじ wrote:

> Here is a little exchange I had with someone on a different i18n list.
>
> ★じゅういっちゃん★
>
> --- Original Message ---
> 差出人: Charlie Ruland <charlie@ruland-web.de>;
> 宛先: ?ト?・ヌ?、?・・、?カ <11@onna.com>;
> Cc:
> 日時: 01/05/12 21:30
> 件名: RE: (OT) Internationalization: Han numerals
>
> >> In Chinese, I think 100 is 荳錐蓜� ("one hundred")+~whereas ink
> >> Japanese 100 is just 逋セ ("hundred"). And in Japanese, zeros are
> >> not used when writing numbers a certain way: 205 is 莠檎卆莠・ not 莠檎卆髮カ莠・>> , although it can be 莠後拭Ε魁��
> >
> >The use of Han numerals in different languages is even more confusing than that. The very number 莠檎卆莠・("two - hundred - five") which in Japanese is 205, means 250 in Chinese and is a variant form of 莠檎卆莠泌香 (".... - ten"). And therefore 205 can NEVER be written WITHOUT 髮カ or 縲・(zero) in the Middle Kingdom.
> >
> >Some people just seem to forget that "CJK Unified Ideographs" does not imply that different languages use the same 貍「蟄・(Han Chinese characters) in the same order to mean the same thing. Or to put it another way, they neglect the fact that the characters are used to write spoken language, not music or mathematical formulas. They should bear in mind that unlike Arabic and Roman numerals each 貍「蟄・gets pronounced in Chinese, and I think in Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese as well.
> >
> >Btw Chinese isn't even genealogically related to Japanese, Korean or Vietnamese, but English is to Russian, Persian and Hindi.
> >
> >> This is why to me the HTML option "number the list in Han
> >> numerals" is humorous.
> >
> >This option is not internationalization, but stupid Anglocentrism/Eurocentrism (ie taking the Western cultural fact that numbers are written alike in different languages to be universal). Why do they let people who maybe are well-intentioned, but lack a truly international background and education set the HTML standard? Please consider that both Chinese and Japanese are clearly among the world's ten leading languages!
> >
> >I'm joining in your laugh,
> >
> >逶ァ譟・逅・>
> >

Received on Monday, 14 May 2001 12:40:52 UTC