Japanese
Encyclopedia article; The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2009
Collections:
Religious Studies, Education, Psychology, History, Literature, Philosophy, Entire Library
...Chinese writing is ideographic rather than phonetic, the Chinese characters do not completely...writing. In the 8th cent. a.d., two phonetic syllabaries, or kana, were therefore...about 2,000. Through another reform, phonetic kana characters are now used to correspond...