From: Doug Ewell (dewell@adelphia.net)
Date: Sat Apr 02 2005 - 23:05:22 CST
"vlad" <emperor dot vlad at gmail dot com> wrote:
> L WITH MIDDLE TILDE is used orthographically in Kobon. R WITH TAIL is
> used orthographically in several Sudanese languages. (see
> http://www.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n2847.pdf, where the capital
> equivalents are proposed)
> BILABIAL CLICK, DENTAL CLICK, LATERAL CLICK, ALVEOLAR CLICK, RETROFLEX
> CLICK, INVERTED GLOTTAL STOP, STRETCHED C, and TURNED T are used to
> write African languages with click consonants (see
> http://www.bisharat.net/Documents/poal30.htm). They should also be
> used for writing names from those languages in English and other
> languages (like !Xóõ, the name of a language famed for its large
> number of consonants, and N!xau, the name of the star of the movie The
> Gods Must Be Crazy). In practice, punctuation marks are often used
> instead where a similar looking one is available.
> KIP SIGN is being used to write Sencoten on one site
> (http://www.languagegeek.com/salishan/sencoten.html), but K +
> COMBINING SHORT STROKE OVERLAY on another
> (http://www.firstvoices.ca/).
It's always risky to appear insensitive to the needs of speakers of
minority languages, especially within a group like this.
Nevertheless, when trying to solve the problem of confusables, it may be
wise to consider the numbers involved. Kobon has 6000 speakers
(Ethnologue). Sencoten has "in excess of 3000" students (WG2 N2784) but
perhaps only 20 actual speakers (Harvey, after Howe and Cook). There
are hundreds of millions of Internet users, potentially exposed to
domain names and the dangers of spoofing and phishing.
The ideal of allowing all letters "needed for words in modern languages"
in domain names may need to be weighed against the risks. This was my
rationale for opposing the SIL proposal to encode an orthographic clone
of the @ symbol, along with its uppercase equivalent, to support Koalib
(44,000 speakers, 20-27% literacy).
It should be evident that the name "N!xau" in a popular movie does not
justify allowing exclamation points in domain names.
-Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
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