acroyear is mostly right, but not for his stated reasons. The written japanese language is made of three character sets: Kanji (Chinese chracters) which define words or ideas in a single character, Hiragana which uses syllables Japanese-native words and Katakana which uses the same syllables, but to define non-Japanese words. Think about the effect of this in written/coded communication. Most technology words and modern science words are written in katakana and are japanified versions of the foreign (usually English) words.
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acroyear is mostly right, but not for his stated reasons. The written japanese language is made of three character sets: Kanji (Chinese chracters) which define words or ideas in a single character, Hiragana which uses syllables Japanese-native words and Katakana which uses the same syllables, but to define non-Japanese words. Think about the effect of this in written/coded communication. Most technology words and modern science words are written in katakana and are japanified versions of the foreign (usually English) words.