Premises of an algebra of Japanese characters
Antoine Bossard · 2008
The Japanese language is made mostly of three characters sets: hiragana, katakana and kanji characters. Kanji characters are inherited from Chinese, and include thousands of glyphs. Characters, especially kanji, memorisation is thus an extremely challenging task for learners of the Japanese language, and even for native speakers who tend to forget the meaning or writing of uncommon characters. In this paper, we address this problem by proposing a novel memorisation technique based on an algebra defined for these kanji characters. By reusing classic algebra notations, the learner is able to rely on acquired knowledge (numbers algebra) to support his/her memorisation of Japanese characters. In addition, we consider automatic processing and application of this algebra to low-spec systems, for instance embedded systems.