script tags update (Re: [mpeg-OTspec] Digest Number 549)

[Hin-Tak Leung]

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On Thu, 31/3/16, mpeg-OTspec at yahoogroups.com <mpeg-OTspec at yahoogroups.com> wrote:
         
>         Re: script tags update               
>         Wed Mar 30, 2016 11:45 pm        (PDT)        . 
> Posted by:               "Adam Twardoch (Lists)"         adamtwardoch         

> 1. I notice that on
 
> https://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/scripttags.htm
 
> the script tag "kana" is listed twice, once as "Hiragana" and once as
>  "Katakana". Is this intentional?
 
It most likely is. Assuming that you may not be familiar with the Japanese
language, Hiragana and Katakana are the phonetic part of the Japanese
character set (as opposed to the pictoral Kanji's), one for denoting native
words and the other for denoting - the sound of - foreign words. Say, an
English word could be represented by its pronounciation approximation as Katakana's,
rather than as Latin glyphs, in a written paragraph.

The two are collectively called Kana's . It is often used collectively this way
to distinguish from the Kanji's, the Chinese-derived pictoral part of the character set.
Phonetic vs pictoral.