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From: jc@minya.UUCP (jc)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Computers and human languages (was Re: What is a byte)
Message-ID: <204@minya.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 20-Sep-87 16:46:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: minya.204
Posted: Sun Sep 20 16:46:54 1987
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> >There's also Serbo-Croation, which has a set of (5) marks, but you very
> >rarely see them outside of childrens' books and language texts.
> 
> The cyrillic version however does not use any accents, diacritics or other
> signs whatsoever, and Serbo-Croation can therefore be seen as one of the
> languages with an 'accentless' alphabet.

Actually, the Cyrillic has the same vowel marks, and they are as rarely used.
> 
> If John Chamber refers with the set of 5 marks to the accent-like signs
> which (in coursebooks etc.) show how a vowel should be stressed, I would
> like to say that as far as I know, there are just 4 of such marks, but
> as he said, they are never really used in the language itself, and do
> not form a part of the alphabet.

There's also a "long unstressed" symbol, a horizontal line above the vowel;
it appears rarely, too, mostly to distinguish definite from indefinite endings
(many of which differ only in length, and which can't always be inferred from
context).
> 
> 	   v      v         v  v         v                
> 	"PISI KAO STO GOVORIS, CITAJ KAO STO JE NAPISANO"
>                                                   v /
>                                         VUK  KARADZIC

This is one of the more impressive guidelines in modern writing systems.
The author was a major Jugoslav author earlier in the century, and he was
active in developing the modern two-alphabet writing system of Serbo-Croatian.
The quote means "Write like you speak; read as it is written."  In the context
of the multiple small groups at odd with each other, and no way of enforcing
a standard dialect on the population, it was a major political success that
the idea was accepted.  In other words, he was advising that people treat 
dialect differences with respect.  Everyone was to write phonetically in 
their own dialects; when reading, you should give the author the respect of
reading it as written.  An educated Jugoslav is expected to understand various
dialects to the point of understanding others' writing, though it may not be
as you would have written it yourself.

Now if the rest of the world could be taught such tolerance.  (Maybe it's
enough to hope that the Jugoslavs can keep such an idea alive in their own
small corner of the world.


-- 
	John Chambers <{adelie,ima,maynard}!minya!{jc,root}> (617/484-6393)