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From: rob@pbhye.UUCP (Rob Bernardo)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Computers and human languages
Message-ID: <2047@pbhye.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 31-Dec-69 18:59:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: pbhye.2047
Posted: Wed Dec 31 18:59:59 1969
Date-Received: Sun, 23-Aug-87 23:44:53 EDT
References: <218@astra.necisa.oz> <142700010@tiger.UUCP> <2792@phri.UUCP> <8708171253.AA21033@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu> <111@quick.UUCP> <480@kuling.UUCP>
Reply-To: rob@pbhye.UUCP (Rob Bernardo)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Lines: 36
Xref: mnetor comp.std.internat:157 sci.lang:1200

In article <480@kuling.UUCP> andersa@kuling.UUCP (Anders Andersson) writes:
Re: Russian
+ There are the hard and soft
+signs which have no phonetic value of their own, but they look like ordinary
+letters. I think it's funny that they are relevant in sorting, just as if the
+apostrophe should have it's own place in the English and French alphabets...

Actually, they are more analogous to the "h" in English when it combines
with "s", "t", etc. to denote a single sound (except that English "h" can
represent a sound by itself while the Russian hard and soft signs cannot).
(There are analogues in other languages, e.g. "h" in Portugues causing
a consonant to be palatal, silent "u" in Spanish and "h" in Italian  which
buffer "c" and "g" from a following "i" and "e".)

But while we're talking about alphabetic sorting, I should like to point
out that in Spanish "ch" is sorted after "c" and before "d". Similarly,
"ll" and "rr" immediately follow their unary counterparts. They are treated
as if single letters when reciting the alphabet, as is the non-ascii
single letter "n~".
+
+Anyway, it's true that accents don't play such a big role in Russian as they
+do in French or Czech. English is probably the least complicated in this
+matter, but I don't consider the English alphabet absolutely "pure" in some
+accentophobic sense. Every alphabet has its history of anomalies.
+
+Disclaimer: I'm NOT an educated linguist, just an amateur. Although I hold
+the above for true, any linguist could probably provide more detail.
+-- 
+Anders Andersson, Dept. of Computer Systems, Uppsala University, Sweden
+Phone: +46 18 183170
+UUCP: andersa@kuling.UUCP (...!{seismo,mcvax}!enea!kuling!andersa)


-- 
I'm not a bug, I'm a feature.
Rob Bernardo, San Ramon, CA	(415) 823-2417	{pyramid|ihnp4|dual}!ptsfa!rob