(keitai-l) Re: Entering text on japanese phones?

From: Gerhard Fasol <fasol_at_eurotechnology.com>
Date: 09/08/00
Message-ID: <39B895EA.75207FCF@eurotechnology.com>
Renfield Kuroda wrote:
> 
> Sauli Hirvi wrote:
> 
> > Well katakana and of course romanji shouldn't be too hard to input
> > on phones. I don't live in japan, but I'd imagine that you wouldn't use
> > kanji to write sms/chatting, am I right?
> >
> 
> Nope. Kanji is also quite liberally used -- mostly because it saves cost: a
> single kanji character is cheaper than expressing the equivalent info in
> multiple hiragana/katana characters.

Actually, Ren of course knows, but many people on this list might not
know: Japanese is much easier to read using Kanji (=Chinese Characters)
than using phonetic katakana and hiragana. One reason is, that Kanji
mostly (not all) have a meaning: i.e. when you see the Kanji for "good"
you know
it means "good". Writing the same kanji in hiragana, it's "i". Now: "i" can
mean "say", "good", "included, up-to", "rank", "will", "difference", "stomach",
"medicine", "well (the one with water inside)",  and many other 
things. Also there are no spaces between words in Japanese, so at least 
for me, when reading my kids books (books for small <6 year old kids are 
often written in Hiragana) , it's difficult for me, because on first glance
I don't know where one word ends and the next one starts...

> 
> And users definitely are thinking about cost-savings; there's a bunch of
> shortened Japanese phrases and words that are becoming more popular b/c they're
> cheaper and easier to send in a text message.

see also the special DoCoMo symbols for kissing, crying, anger, onsen, drinking
etc.

Gerhard Fasol
Eurotechnology Japan K. K.
http://www.eurotechnology.com/
fasol@eurotechnology.com
Received on Fri Sep 8 10:26:02 2000