Laurie wrote:
> If Japanese has no "alphabet", how are lists arranged so one can find
> anything? That is, how are lists alphabetized?
> Is this lack of an alphabet the reason one can not alphabetize
> Favorites in Maxthon?
>
> Laurie
>
Japanese has no alphabet, true. Japanese instead has something called a
syllabary (two of them really, vaguely similar to upper and lower case),
called "kana". Syllabaries are different from alphabets in that alphabets
have separate characters for consonants and vowels, with syllables created
as combinations thereof; whereas syllabaries have characters that
themselves denote syllables.
With kana, for example, there is a single "letter" (one kana) that "spells"
the sound "ka", while using the Latin alphabet we need two characters,
one "k" and one "a". Syllabaries are generally only found for languages
with limited sound systems, due to the ensuing profusion of characters as
the number of sounds to be "spelled" increases.
However, to say that Japanese has no alphabet is *NOT* to say that there is
no set order to the written language. The kana system itself has an
explicit order similar to the ABCs, as so:
A I U E O
Ka Ki Ku Ke Ko
Sa Shi Su Se So
Ta Chi Tsu Te To
Na Ni Nu Ne No
Ha Hi Fu He Ho
Ma Mi Mu Me Mo
Ya Yu Yo
Ra Ri Ru Re Ro
Wa Wo
N (syllable-final, nothing starts with this)
Note that sounds like "sha" and "chu" are listed under "shi" and "chi"
respectively, as in kana they are "spelled" such as "shi" + small "ya",
and "chi" + small "yu".
So if I were to look up the word "renkon" (lotus root) in a Japanese
dictionary, I would leaf through towards the end of the book until I found
the section for "Re" and narrow down from there.
Hope this helps,
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