> Eric Hildum wrote:
> >
> > This is very odd, as for most of Japanese history, writing in kanji was a
> > sign of education. In fact, older documents are almost pure kanji - many of
> > the words now written in hiragana in modern usage were written in kanji
> > previously.
The famous genji monogatari is written almost only in hiragana, almost no
Kanji...
> > Further, writing documents in katakana tends to make them
> > ambiguous, which is not a good thing when writing laws. Are you sure this is
> > correct?
Apologies here - I was unclear. These laws used to use Katakana
at the place of Hiragana not at the place of kanji.
What you say about using as much Kanji as possible is true for men.
Women used to use mainly hiragana... for example Murasaki Shikibu
used mainly hiragana (and almost no kanji) when writing
genji-monogatari around 1000AD.
Gerhard Fasol
http://www.eurotechnology.com/
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Received on Sat Dec 1 05:34:01 2001