John Hudson said:
> I am concerned, though, that at the end of the day the
> phrase 'Unicode is a plain text computer encoding standard that includes
> languages spoken by Elves' *sounds* daft, even if we eventually reckon it
> not to be.
All a matter of astute marketing. If we have to get down to this level
of detail, it would be:
"Unicode is a plain text computer encoding standard that includes
the writing systems for [first list enough "respectable" world languages to
bedazzle the most bottomline-minded skeptic] as well as Tengwar, a
writing system used by professors of Modern and Old English to write
Quenya poetry published in refereed journals."
> Which is to say that I don't think these scripts are
> self-justifying in the way that scripts of non-fictional origin are. If
> they are to be encoded, then the reasons for the encoding need to be stated
> very clearly, so as not to hand Unicode's detractors a club with which to
> beat us.
Just turn the argument. The Unicode Consortium encodes them because
an academic community has deemed them worthy of use and publication,
and needs a character encoding for transmission, word processing,
web publication -- all the usual reasons that apply just as well to
Avestan or Aramaic. If someone wants to come beating with a club, cite
the boilerplate "academic use" policy and politely invite them to go
beat up on the academics who think writing and studying poetry in Quenya
or other Elvish languages is academically respectable. Maybe they'll
get their grants cancelled. Oh wait..., humanities scholars
don't get grants in the first place. *hehe*
--Ken
P.S. I suggest that all this is a matter of preconceptions and
prejudicial opinions among certain rather dour types about what
is "worthy" of serious attention and what is not. The Tolkien Elvish
languages have both the great fortune and simultaneous misfortune
of having elegant constructed scripts for their writing. If Tolkien
had been satisfied with simply writing them using the Latin
alphabet, we wouldn't be having this discussion at all, because
nobody would care if some scholars of Old English went off and wrote
Quenya poetry using *Latin* letters. But why should beautiful, high-minded
lyrics in the constructed Quenya language be inherently any less worthy
of study than other topics that get serious scholastic attention?
For example, see:
http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/8/8-1208.html
where serious linguistic scholars sink their teeth into Pig Latin
(igpay atinlay), Egg Latin (eggegg leggateggin), flip-top
(e hot o lot-squared "hello"), Oppish (umopbopropeloplopa "umbrella"),
French "verlan" (< "e l'envers"), and Japanese babibubebo
(abaibisubukuburibiibimubu "ice cream"). Now you *must* admit
that *that* is really serious stuff that it is truly worth
all our time and investments to have encoded Latin letters
and Japanese hiragana in Unicode to record for posterity!!
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