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<blockquote data-quote="Nyeshet" data-source="post: 3019164" data-attributes="member: 18363">So let me see if I have this right. They have to type in another written language (either english letters for chinese or the japanese syllabary hiragana characters for japanese), then the computer notices the letters (or syllables, in the case of japanese hiragana) can form a word, so it takes the most likely word and replaces the letters / hiragana with the necessary character. This suggests that they do not use a keyboard with their kanji upon it, instead relying on english letters (for chinese) or hiragana (for japanese). Before computers, were they limited purely to such non-kanji script when writing on a typewriter? I know with Chinese they could (and did, for a looooong time as I think they created the printing press or an equivalent) use the block type, in which case each character on the page had to be carefully arranged before printing. That would be too slow for modern needs, of course, but it would work for a language with 10k+ official kanji. I think if you throw in the non-official and historical ones the number jumps to around 30-50k kanji. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/Getting back to this post, I don't think anyone is saying that English is the international common tongue in the sense of a universal language. Rather, they are saying that its ubiquity suggests that it is the closest thing to such a thing as 3e or 3.5e 'common' tongue, and that from the 1e (2e?) perspective of the common tongue merely being a common trade language of little use outside of that (and little known beyond those that travel or trade often) English nearly is this world's common tongue.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Nyeshet, post: 3019164, member: 18363"] So let me see if I have this right. They have to type in another written language (either english letters for chinese or the japanese syllabary hiragana characters for japanese), then the computer notices the letters (or syllables, in the case of japanese hiragana) can form a word, so it takes the most likely word and replaces the letters / hiragana with the necessary character. This suggests that they do not use a keyboard with their kanji upon it, instead relying on english letters (for chinese) or hiragana (for japanese). Before computers, were they limited purely to such non-kanji script when writing on a typewriter? I know with Chinese they could (and did, for a looooong time as I think they created the printing press or an equivalent) use the block type, in which case each character on the page had to be carefully arranged before printing. That would be too slow for modern needs, of course, but it would work for a language with 10k+ official kanji. I think if you throw in the non-official and historical ones the number jumps to around 30-50k kanji. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ Getting back to this post, I don't think anyone is saying that English is the international common tongue in the sense of a universal language. Rather, they are saying that its ubiquity suggests that it is the closest thing to such a thing as 3e or 3.5e 'common' tongue, and that from the 1e (2e?) perspective of the common tongue merely being a common trade language of little use outside of that (and little known beyond those that travel or trade often) English nearly [i]is[/i] this world's common tongue. [/QUOTE]

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