pom@under..ARPA (Peter O. Mikes) (08/19/87)
Subject1: How many bits for modifiers? ======================================== In article you rob@pbhye.UUCP (Rob Bernardo) WRITE + In article <15381@mordor.s1.gov> pom@s1-under.UUCP () writes: + but ANY PARTICULAR LETTER either has one - or it does not. That means + that we need to reserve just 1 bit ( 0.. unmodified) and (1.. modified). + to take care of dozens of languages. >Not so. > French allows ' and ^ over all vowels and ` additionally over "e". pom: OK. I sit corrected. I want to thank all people who posted counter-examples to my conjecture ( I said 'all langs I know' but I did not say how many it is, right?) . As far as French is concerned, was it not De Gaulle who said :" How can one rule a nation, which has 375 kinds of cheese?" Now, "ARE WE going to stoop up to French and reserve WHOLE BYTE to code cheeses or DO THEY HAVE to reduce their excess ??" I would like to ask. I (for one) believe that this is an issue of fundamental approach to coding of letters. Obviously there is a trade-off, Scylla and a hard place! OK, I am not giving up. I am going to collect all those ocurrences of multiple modifiers ( so send me some more) and I will crawl back with few more, yet minimal number of bits. I do believe that Escape Sequences are just that, patches, a cheap escapes, and that we should plan ahead so that we may escape them. Obviously, there are some huge character sets, (graphical, mathematical, OK Chinese..) but certainly we do not want to code each letter in this text, with 1024 bytes, when I (for one) have a hard time with a Sun3 KBD. So, we need to find a way, how to switch in a clean and economical way between smaller and bigger sets and how to use 'means', such as digraphs to express big-set-ideas trapped in a small-set-system and vice-versa. Subject2: Diacritical signs in English and phonetics =================================================== >In article <717@maccs.UUCP> gordan@maccs.UUCP (Gordan Palameta) writes: >> English uses a highly non-phonetic script; the illiteracy rate in the >> U.S. is at alarming levels. This might be a non-sequitur, but >> undoubtedly a phonetic script for English would make life a lot simpler. >> Will it ever happen? Not a chance. and then >Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy WRITES: Well, maybe a small chance. When I was in, I think, the first >grade (in New York City, about 1965) they tried out an experimental reading >and writing system on us. We were taught a phonetic alphabet. All I >really really remember about it was that letters like "c" which admitted to >two pronunciation were banned -- you wrote "kalsify" instead of "calcify" >My mother is convinced that my poor spelling skills are a direct >effect of this phonetic writing experiment. She's probably right. Indeed. It is not a coincidence. I had the reverse experience, as I started to read English before I had the chance to speak it. The correlation between the graphical image and sounds develops naturally (as extension of the hand-eye coordination in babies) - and, like that, it is age sensitive. Even though my textbook of English had three parallel lines for everything { one normal English text, one phonetic ( why not fonetic?) text and one in my native language } I had a lot of un-learning to do when I came to an English speaking country (and it gets much harder as one gets older) It is not a good idea to mix-up the two (visual image with sound). It acts like that poster in Exploratorium which says RED in blue letters and BLUE in red letters. VERY CONFUSING. Which reminds me. When my doughter started shool in Cleveland OH, they used 'a color method' in which the proper spelling was used - but color of letters provided 'the (otherwise) missing information' on sounds. That seems worked very well; I see only cost as a barrier to general use. I have also had chance to see that children in the environment of a phonetic language (such as my native) learn easier and sooner than American children (even though the color method, it seems, matched that) And so, I would like to ask: Would it not be acceptable to use the propper spelling and supply 'the missing information' by means of diacritic signs? ( Naturally, in an editor, you may have a switch and not to show them or not to print them out. It would just be an option, when e.g. you print a text-book of lang or want to indicate un-usual pronounciation.?? After all, if we will include the modifiers in ISCII to accomodate the French would it not make sense to give them something to do in English? I would appreciate your opinion on this. // comp.std.internat,sci.lang // Yours Dr. Frish -a scientist- (quite mad) pom@under.s1.gov || @s1-under.UUCP
Jack_F_Hamilton@cup.portal.com (08/21/87)
I believe that de Gaulle was speaking of England, not of France. Also, literary English uses the backwards accent on "e" in the past participle ending "ed" to indicated that it is pronounced as a separate syllable, not as a "d" added to the previous syllable. "Marke`d" would be pronounced as /mark ed/ instead of as /markd/. It may also be used in other places. I still see the double dot over the second "o" in co-op occasionally. The "e" in the name of the city of Fremont, California, has an accent mark. Yes, it's a Spanish name, but it's also the legal name of a town located in a state which has adopted English as its official language (so it must be English, right?).
Isaac_K_Rabinovitch@cup.portal.com (08/22/87)
I think accents in English are "proper" only in words that are borrowed from continental languages. They gradually disappear as people forget that they are loan words (coordination was original French; coordinate comes from coordination by back formation). I think the heavy percentage of loan words in English accounts for its lack of accents. English speaker assume that the "correct" accent is the one from the original language, and it's impractical to remember the accenting conventions of all the languages English has borrowed from. The spelling inconsistencies are quite bad enough.
dstalder@gmu90x.UUCP (Darren Stalder) (08/24/87)
In article <15401@mordor.s1.gov>, pom@under..ARPA (Peter O. Mikes) writes: [Subject1 deleted] > Subject2: Diacritical signs in English and phonetics > =================================================== > and then >Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy WRITES: ... >>My mother is convinced that my poor spelling skills are a direct >>effect of this phonetic writing experiment. She's probably right. > > Indeed. It is not a coincidence. I had the reverse experience, as I started > to read English before I had the chance to speak it. The correlation between > the graphical image and sounds develops naturally (as extension of the > hand-eye coordination in babies) - and, like that, it is age sensitive. ... > It is not a good idea to mix-up the two (visual image with sound). > It acts like that poster in Exploratorium which says RED in blue > letters and BLUE in red letters. VERY CONFUSING. ... >Yours Dr. Frish -a scientist- (quite mad) pom@under.s1.gov || @s1-under.UUCP I would have to agree with this. My father was stationed in Germany when I was learning to read and speak. Since the TV was in German, but I had books in English, I learned to read before I spoke. I still have problems with pronunciation for words. You wouldn't believe how I used to say hyperbole. Torin/Wolf/Darren Stalder UUCP: ...!(seismo | dolqci | pyrdc)!gmu90x!dstalder BITNET: DSTALDER@GMUVAX SNAIL: 1005 N. Roosevelt St./Arlington, VA 22205