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--- lb:en.kanji [2024-04-25 09:02:37] – removed - external edit (Unknown date) 127.0.0.1
+++ lb:en.kanji [2025-04-29 10:21:14] (current) – ninjasr
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
+====== Adapting Kanji to English ======
+A while ago I started wondering if English would benefit from being written in Chinese characters, as the English spelling system is already something of a mess, maybe a pure logography would benefit English.\\
+While I'm not the first person to come up with this idea, the other attempts I've seen have been underwhelming, to say the least.
+{{tag>linguas musing}}
+===== Notes =====
+==== Kanji ====
+I'm using Kanji over Hanzi or Hanja because I'm most familiar with Kanji over the other two, and because Japanese uses Kanji in a mixed script. If English were to adopt Chinese characters, then I believe it would likely use a mixed script.
+==== English mixed script ====
+While thinking about this, I realized English already appears to use a mixed script. It has two alphabets (uppercase and lowercase), similar to Japan's two syllabaries (Hiragana and Katakana), and a logography. However, there appear to be far less logographs in English, and they're all almost exclusively used for short-hand. The best example I can think of is the #, which can be read as 'hash'/'hashtag'/'number' depending on the surrounding context.
+==== Yingzi ====
+[[http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm|Yingzi]] was something created by a conlanger mimicking Chinese characters, and one of the other attempts at creating a logography for English. While I've gone through the article, I think that Yingzi is honestly kind of stupid, but that's only because the symbols the author chose are over-complicated, and thus uncomfortable for actual use.
+===== Kanji Only =====
+Kanji adapted to English but without a mixed script, so purely logographic.\\
+Since I haven't had the time, I haven't bothered to work on this yet.
+===== Mixed Script =====
+Kanji adapted to English with latin used in addition to Kanji in a mixed script.\\
+Similarly to the previous section, I haven't worked on this yet.
+===== English Logography =====
+Since English already contains a few logographs, I figured it would make sense to mix the existing symbols together to create a unique logography. I've already identified a few symbols that could serve as good logographs, which are listed below.
+==== Logographs ====
+  * Numerals
+    * 0
+    * 1
+    * 2
+    * 3
+    * 4
+    * 5
+    * 6
+    * 7
+    * 8
+    * 9
+  * Currency symbols
+    * $
+      * Money, Currency, Dollars (american or otherwise)
+    * ¥
+      * Money, Currency, Yen, Yuan
+    * ¢
+      * Cents, pennies, small amounts of money.
+    * €
+      * Money, Euro
+  * Other
+    * #
+      * Number, Hash, Numeral
+    * @
+      * At, location, area
+    * %
+      * Percentage, division
+    * ~
+      * 'Around'; 'Roughly'
+    * ♪
+      * Music; Playful tone.
+    * X
+      * In regular English it's already occasionally read as ‘cross’ or ‘Christ’.