A misleading point of view from someone who undoubtedly
didn't intend to mislead:
>> [somebody]
> > Now I wonder how agile the Japanese are in inputting Kana on their
keypads.
From: "Gerhard Fasol" <fasol@eurotechnology.com>
> A very small fraction of Japanese uses katakana.
> Before WW2 laws were written in katakana, and it's a way
> to express that laws are old, saying that they are written
> in Katakana.
>
> Most Japanese text is Kanji + hiragana.
The impression this will leave for anyone who hasn't studied
Japanese for more than two weeks is that katakana is an
arcane, archaic sub-script within the Japanese writing
system, one that has been falling into disuse since the
Occupation.
Go take a look at www.yahoo.co.jp to get a sense of
how much katakana Japanese text can have. The top
page is about half katakana.
Take a look at www.nikkei.co.jp to get a sense of
what a Japanese newpaper might have: maybe 5%
to %15, depending on the topic.
This isn't "a very small fraction." It's an increasing
fraction. (Annoyingly so.)
Getting to the question: since most kanji henkan (conversion
of input to Chinese-style characters) involves entering
hiragana as an intermediate step, virtually ALL input
to Japanese text processors (desktop and handheld)
is in kana, except for arabic numerals. So if you're
trying to become adept at inputting Japanese, you're
doing it very much by becoming adept at entering kana,
no matter how much kanji you use.
-michael turner
leap@gol.com
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Received on Fri Nov 30 14:10:41 2001