2007-06-19 09:52:54 · 5 answers · asked by mistandcrust 1 in Computers & Internet ➔ Programming & Design
Because one byte can take on one of only 256 values, but there are way more than 256 Chinese characters. With two bytes you can represent up to 256*256 or 65536 characters, although typically not all combinations are actually used (e.g., the top bit of each byte is often assumed to be unavailable for coding characters).
2007-06-19 09:58:48 · answer #1 · answered by Gadiodian Shift 2 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Since the english language only has 26alphabets (not counting numbers), it can get stored in a a single byte. A byte containing 8 bits can uniquely represent 256 (2 to the power 8) symbols.
Since the chinese script has more than 256 unique symbols (characters) each character cannot be represented by one single byte and hence is a mulitibyte language.
2007-06-19 17:04:19 · answer #2 · answered by wooster 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Chinese character sets contain more than 128 extended characters so some characters have to be represented using multi-bytes (multiple bytes).
2007-06-19 16:58:23 · answer #3 · answered by Alan D 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Because after the first byte a half hour later you need another byte...
2007-06-19 20:25:12 · answer #4 · answered by MarkG 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Please reword your question.
2007-06-19 16:55:29 · answer #5 · answered by mikey71174 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋