Python syntax in Lisp and Scheme

[Tim Hochberg]

Pascal Bourguignon wrote:
> Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> writes:
> 
> 
>>On Tue, 07 Oct 2003 21:59:11 +0200, Pascal Bourguignon wrote:
[SNIP]
>>A richer alphabet is often more readable. Morse code can't be read as fast
>>as Latin alphabet because it uses too few different symbols. Japanese say
>>they won't abandon Kanji because it's more readable as soon as you know it -
>>you don't have to compose words from many small pieces which look alike
>>but each word is distinct. Of course *too* large alphabet requires long
>>learning and has technical difficulties, but Lisp expressions are too
>>little distinctive for my taste.
> 
> 
> Well,  I would say  that kanji  is badly  designed, compared  to latin
> alphabet.   The voyels  are composed  with consones  (with diacritical
> marks) and  consones are  written following four  or five  groups with
> additional diacritical  marks to  distinguish within the  groups. It's
> more a phonetic code than a true alphabet.
[SNIP]

Admittedly, I found the above paragraph pretty hard to parse and my 
never stellar knowledge of Japanees has mostly evaporated over time, but 
I'm pretty sure you are talking about Hiragana (or Katakana), not Kanji. 
   Japaneese has three alphabets, which they mix and match in ordinary 
writing. Kanji aren't phonetic at all, they're ideograms, and can 
typically be read at least two completely different ways depending on 
the context, making reading Japanese extra confusing for the non fluent.

A random web search supplies this basic descripion of Hiragana, Katakana 
and Kanji:

http://www.kanjisite.com/html/wak/wak1.html

-tim