Page:Calligraphy for computers (Hershey, 1967) (IA DTIC AD0662398).djvu/23

 on pronunciation applies therefore to many characters, Ambiguity is avoided insofar as each on occurs only within the context for which it has a unique interpretation. The pronunciations can be transliterated into the Roman alphabet in accordance with the Hepburn system. The Romanization is called rōmaji by the Japanese. Certain vowel sounds are suppressed while others are lengthened in certain pairs of kana which are transliterated into distinct phonemes. There are 114 phonemes in the rōmaji.

The structure of each Chinese character consists of one or more parts. One part of every character is called a radical. There are 214 radicals. Many of the radicals are themselves complete characters, while other radicals no longer are used except as parts of characters. To find a character in a character dictionary the first step is to recognize the radical in the character. The radicals are listed serially in the order of increasing number of strokes in the index of the dictionary. All characters with the same radical are listed together in the order of increasing number of strokes in the body of the dictionary. The problem of finding a character thus is reduced to the scanning of a relatively small number of pages in the dictionary.

Character Selection

In view of the large number of characters in a character dictionary, severe limitations had to be imposed on the selection of characters for digitalization. The scope of selection of characters was limited to three sets of characters. The first set includes those radicals which are members also of the Tōyō Kanji list. The second set includes those characters which are taught to the Japanese children in the first grade. The third set is a selection of characters of scientific interest. A character which was found to be a component of two or more compound characters was certain to be included. If one character of a pair of antonyms was accepted, the other character was included also, or if 17