kanji / hanja / han tu ...

this is a placeholder for me inasmuch as it is a blog posting -- the new york times web site has a really interesting article on nom, the old classical vietnamese script based on chinese characters.  reading the wikipedia article, it's fun that a lot of the characters make sense to me even though i'm studying japanese, an entirely different language.  reminds me of the time i compared notes about japanese and korean with a cousin of mine in a california brewery a few years ago.  he was finishing his degree in classical korean poetry and when he broke out the chinese characters most of them registered with me too.  neat.