> From: Elliotte Rusty Harold [mailto:elharo@metalab.unc.edu]
>
> At 4:15 PM -0500 6/4/01, Ayers, Mike wrote:
>
> > I have used Arabic numerals all my life without once
> thinking that I
> >was writing Arabic.
>
> Really? I myself have been writing European numerals using the
> Arabic-Indic place-value system.
</SNIP>
Cool. I still haven't had time to read my history of numbers book,
but it'll be interesting. However, I think this went astray of my attempted
point, so let us for the moment ignore the inaccuracies of my grade school
teachers and get to the points that I was trying to make (hopefully I'll be
clear this time):
1. When told that I was using a writing system that was named the
same as another language, I was not inordinately confused. A better example
would be the Latin alphabet used for many European languages (yes, Latin's a
dead language, but a language nonetheless).
2. Apparently obscure bits of history often make it through to the
general public. In this case, far more people than are being credited
already know that Japanese and/or Koreans use Chinese characters to write
with.
Besides, let's face it. Call 'em anything but "Chinese characters"
and you'll see a whole bunch of people asking "Why does it say [insert new
name here]? Aren't those Chinese characters?"
/|/|ike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Jul 06 2001 - 00:17:18 EDT