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From: pete@aiva.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Computers and human languages (was Re: What is a byte)
Message-ID: <156@aiva.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 25-Aug-87 11:36:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: aiva.156
Posted: Tue Aug 25 11:36:24 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 29-Aug-87 07:56:32 EDT
References: <218@astra.necisa.oz> <142700010@tiger.UUCP> <2792@phri.UUCP> <8708171253.AA21033@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu> <111@quick.UUCP>
Reply-To: pete@uk.ac.ed.aiva (Peter Whitelock,F   SB x226E,,)
Organization: Dept. of AI, Univ. of Edinburgh, UK
Lines: 18
Xref: utgpu comp.std.internat:175 sci.lang:1167

>I was told once (by a respected linguist, as I recall) that English and
>Russian are the ONLY two languages written with unaccented alphabets.  I
>know you have to add the qualifier "modern" to make that true, and maybe
>"major" as well, although I don't know of any exceptions right off.  I don't
>know whether he didn't count Katakana and Hiragana as alphabets or whether
>one cannot (or normally would not) write Japanese entirely in one or both
>of these scripts.  

One could consider katakana and hiragana as alphabets (functionally
equivalent to, in some sense), and one could write Japanese entirely 
in either one, probably introducing a lot of ambiguity. The point is
that they have accents - the two little strokes (called nigori) at 
the top right of certain characters indicate the voiced version of
that character, and without this indication, the Japanese would be
unreadable garbage.

Pete Whitelock
AI Edinburgh