Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> The same sound has up to four different tones possible. That doesn't make it 
> unambiguous, tho. For each sound+tone, there's still dozens of meanings you 
> need to disambiguate, even if it's written.

  I have always wondered why in Japanese, and probably also in Chinese,
there's no strict one-to-one-to-one correspondence between a kanji symbol,
its meaning and its pronounciation. The whole writing system seems to be
designed precisely for that: One symbol has (exactly) one meaning and one
pronounciation, making it completely unambiguous.

  But no, the same kanji can have a half dozen meanings, typically at least
two or three different pronounciations depending on context (at least in
Japanese), and moreover, the same word can sometimes be written with
different kanji symbols (again depending on context, meaning and/or the
phase of the Moon). So the whole idea with the kanji writing system seems
to be completely wasted, making it overly complicated for no good reason.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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