Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!swbatl!synoptics!frose From: frose@synoptics.COM (Flavio Rose) Newsgroups: comp.std.c++ Subject: Re: ISO Latin 1? (was Re: design by committee) Summary: Number of kanji, katakana and hiragana Message-ID: <22119@mvis1.com> Date: 6 Dec 90 00:30:27 GMT References: <1990Nov28.164154.5718@zoo.toronto.edu> Organization: SynOptics Communications Inc. Mountain View, Ca. Lines: 22 Supplementing quickly a previous posting: There are 51 katakana and 51 hiragana, but there are also a few wrinkles to counting them: You can add accent-like objects called "nigori" to about half of them. Two of the hiragana and three of the katakana are no longer really used (since the 1948 spelling reform). Three of the hiragana and at least three of the katakana come in both normal and small versions. There are said to be only 2,000 "commonly used" kanji. The 1948 spelling reform singled out a specific set of about 2,000 as being "preferred" in some sense. However, the computer character set standard for Japanese (JISX0208-1983) gives numbers to 2965 "first level" kanji and 3388 "second level" kanji. That standard also includes the two kanas, the Latin, Cyrillic and Greek alphabets, and a large assortment of special symbols. Yours truly, Flavio Rose SynOptics Communications, Inc.