Not so - katakana are generally used to spell out words borrowed or derived
from foreign languages other than Chinese [daibingu =diving], or to indicate
stress (comparable to the use of italics in Enlish).  Hiragana are used to spell
out the inflection endings of verbs and adjectives, as well as the relatively few
words of indigenous Japanese origin which have never acquired a kanji
character representation [e.g., motto, furafura], or as sidescripts to indicate
the pronunciation of little-known characters which are not part of the standard
toyo kanji list.

But aren't we a little off topic here?

Robert Delfs

On Thu, 7 Sep 2000 08:44:17 -0400, Reef Fish wrote:

>Pourquoi?  Pour le hiragana, c'est exactement la mˆme chose que le
>katakana ‚xcept‚ la compl‚xit‚ relative des kanas (les caractŠres)..
>
>For the non-frogs, the above says, "Why?  For hiragana, it's exactly
>the same thing as katakana except the relative complexity of the
>kanas (the characters)."


Robert Delfs

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