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From: joe@haddock.ISC.COM (Joe Chapman)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Change the software or the alphabet?
Message-ID: <1539@haddock.ISC.COM>
Date: Thu, 29-Oct-87 11:40:40 EST
Article-I.D.: haddock.1539
Posted: Thu Oct 29 11:40:40 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 3-Nov-87 04:22:45 EST
References: <1446@haddock.ISC.COM> <365@zuring.cwi.nl> <1924@kuukkeli.tut.fi>
Reply-To: joe@haddock.ima.isc.com (Joe Chapman)
Followup-To: sci.lang
Organization: Interactive Systems, Boston
Lines: 28
Xref: mnetor comp.std.internat:301 sci.lang:1624

Mr Karl Heuer: "The alphabet is the servant of Man, not the other way
around; thus it is appropriate to suggest that it should evolve to
meet Man's changing needs."  Hra Hannu-Matti Jarvinen: "KEEP YOUR
NASTY FINGERS OUT OF OUR ALPHABET AND FIX YOUR PROGRAMME(R)S!!"

We've probably hammered this topic to death (at least in sci.lang) but
it seems to me rather silly to lump languages such as Finnish, which
have a few non-ascii characters, in with languages such as Chinese.  A
proposal to truncate alphabets in the former group seems to me, at the
risk of seeming unpatriotic, as a peculiarly American sort of
chauvanism.  Whether the trend towards simplification of ideographic
languages---for example, official simplified characters and the use of
pinyin in Chinese, and the disuse of non-toyo list kanji in
Japanese---reflects a natural evolution in the language or another
instance of Western-influenced information-processsing arrogance is
anyone's guess.

The more interesting assertion to me is the notion that language is
simply another tool which can be altered to suit societal needs, as
opposed to something people and societies find themselves in the midst
of.  Granted, minor changes in the fabric of language can be made by
governments and individuals, but one simply has to wait for the
fundamental process of signification to change.  This is a topic that
can probably only be argued in French; any comments?

--
Joe Chapman
harvard!ima!joe