Writing Systems - Second edition - Geoffrey Sampson
A mixed system: Japanese writing
Writing Systems - Second edition - Geoffrey Sampson
Geoffrey Sampson [+]
University of South Africa
Geoffrey Sampson is Professor Emeritus at Sussex University and a Research Fellow in the Linguistics Department at the University of South Africa. His most recent book is Grammar Without Grammaticality (2014, with Anna Babarczy).
Description
This chapter examines how the Japanese, having adopted Chinese script during their encounter with Chinese civilization, then made a shift to adapt it to a language that was unrelated to Chinese. However, unlike the Koreans, the Japanese never made a clean break to a different kind of script with the result that Japanese is complex, mixed system, partly logographic and partly phonographic.