[3np]

Hiragana/Katakana absolutely can not be interpreted as “uppercase/lowercase”. BTW kana also has full-width/half-width versions, which while also distinct would be closer.

For a more pure example, consider Bopomofo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo

[JohnHaugeland]

> Hiragana/Katakana absolutely can not be interpreted as “uppercase/lowercase”.

I didn't say it was upper or lower case.

I said it was a difficult and arguable parallel, because just like upper and lower case, it's a setup where the letters you use are switched out for others because of context.

.

> For a more pure example, consider Bopomofo.

From my perspective, it's literally exactly the same thing: a case where the letters you use are switched out because of context.

In fact, my linguistics textbook gives Bopomofo as an example *in the same sentence as katakana*.

Pardon me if I trust the linguists on this.

[3np]

Depending on what that sentence is, it doesn’t sound contradictory.

I considered it more as it’s own one set of characters (in the same way that kanji and Roman letters are their own)

A difference here is that while Japanese words can correctly be written as either hiragana or katakana, the idiomatic way is to mix them depending on the word (and occasionally context).

Bopomofo is its own writing system and doesn’t really get mixed with, say, pinyin.

There’s nothing to 1-to-1 map like with kana.

[JohnHaugeland]

I will trust the professional linguists on this.

Thanks for understanding. Have a good day.

[3np]

Still curious to hear that quote. Good day to you too ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯