Re: [tlug] katakana

[Jim Breen <jim.breen@example.com>]

Brett Robson <b-robson@example.com>
> > 
> > Can anybody explain the need for 3 different katakana characters? What's
> > the purpose of having two smaller sized letters (narrow and half-width) ?
> > 
> >  http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UFF00.pdf
> >  http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U30A0.pdf
> > 
> > Example:
> >  [NORMAL] ワ, HEX: 30EF, isWide:1
> >  [HALF] ヮ, HEX: 30EE, isWide:1
> >  [NARROW] ワ, HEX: FF9C, isWide:0
> 
> The small (half) katakana are used to make sounds (most often) combining
> ya, yu, and yo to a sound xi, eg ki, gi, shi ... I can't think of
> anything that would use your example WA
> 
> 	eg キョ　KIyo=kyo
> 
> The half width characters (narrow) are an old system, they only needed 7
> bits to represent each character. Still used on many cash registers,
> billing and corporate systems. In normal katakana ギ(GI) is one
> character, but in half width it is two キ゛ Because katakana are simple
> they can be printed smaller.

Everything that has been said so far is correct. I just want to add that
the inclusion of the half-width katakana in Unicode was done officially
for the purpose of allowing roundtrip conversion of JIS201 kana to
Unicode and back again. The text in the Unicode standard advises against
actually having half-width katakana glyphs, preferring a markup
indication for this. The unofficial reason for including it was that if
it wasn't done, there would have been roaring about cultural imperialism,
since half-width katakana is as essential a part of Life-In-Japan as sushi,
sashimi and barfing in the gutter.

Jim