December 13, 200520 yr I don't think it's properly explained in the film, but The solar system that Firefly/Serenity is set in was colonised by an alliance between the US and China, making mandarin a second language for most of the characters. Curiously (at least, from what I've noticed in the show and film), it seems that while most spoken word is English (with Chinese swearwords), most written word is Chinese. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Thanks for clearing that up. There's a lot of written Japanese as well, but you really can't expect the actors to master a whole new language just for a film now, can you? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I am not educated in chinese or japanese linguistics, but don't the written languages of both sometimes use the same symbols? wait, i did a search and found a basic explanation about manga that confirms what i was thinking with the letter characters, "KANJI: Pictiographic/idiographic characters of Chinese origin. They are used for conceptual words such as verbs, adj, adv, etc. as well as Japanese names(places, people, nouns, etc.). Japanese use both the Chinese reading of these characters as well as their own. So where as the Chinese Kanji have one reading each, Japaense Kanji can have anywhere from 1 to 6 or more readings! That includes meaning AND pronuciation!! The average Japanese is familiar with about 3,000 kanji characters. There are close to 7000 characters used in modern written Japanese. The most comprehensive Japanese Kanji dictionary has 20,000 entries. Chinese dictionaries have 40,000. Most Kanji are not used, and many people cannot read them all. Sometimes you will find in manga or on television a difficult Kanji with a hiragana spelling next to it to help those that can't read it. With so many different kanji and so many singular kanji that can have seperate meanings and pronunciations each, these "spellings" are often needed." yeah, so julianw, did you see katakana or hirigana or a sentence that only made sense in japanese? if not, i am guessing you just saw some symbols that are common to chinese and japanese Edited December 13, 200520 yr by Blank
December 13, 200520 yr ^ I am pretty sure they are Japanese since my Japanese roommate pointed it out for me. Now I seem to remember that there are three different versions of written Japanese just like you said and one of them closely resembles Chinese, so it must be katakana or hirigana on the doors inside Serenity. Edited December 13, 200520 yr by julianw
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