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From: rotondo@ernie.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: Languages
Message-ID: <18924@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Fri, 15-May-87 16:34:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.18924
Posted: Fri May 15 16:34:15 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 16-May-87 15:35:32 EDT
References: <18919@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: rotondo@ernie.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Scott Rotondo)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 10

In article <18919@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> jmm@miro.Berkeley.EDU (James Moore) writes:
> 
> Is knowing the original language of an encrypted message ever necessary
> for attempting to decipher it?

It certainly is; for example, suppose you have a substitution cipher and
you want to do a frequency analysis to find the most common letters. 
Which plaintext letters are most common varies from language to language.

				-- Scott