From: Clark Cox (clarkcox3@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Jan 29 2007 - 08:12:52 CST
On 1/29/07, Michael Maxwell <mmaxwell@casl.umd.edu> wrote:
> > Place names are clearly a huge source of characters needing
> > encoding, and I know that the current emphasis of the PRC's
> > delegation to the IRG is along these lines. Even a tiny spot
> > on the Chinese map like Macao needed to have a number of new
> > characters added to handle some of their place names.
>
> Again, a question (and feel free to take this off-line, as it's getting away from Unicode): When we run into a new place name on a map in a language that uses an alphabetic script, pronouncing the name is just a matter of sounding out the letters (unless it's a Welsh name :-)). But what do people do when they run into these Chinese characters in place names? They weren't taught all of them in school, were they? (If they were, then I would have thought that getting them into Unicode would have happened long ago, because it would have been a simple matter of looking at the school textbooks.) Or do people just learn a new character, without any pronunciation??
Often, that is all that can be done; at least until you hear the
pronunciation from someone else. That is one of the principal
difficulties in learning Chinese.
-- Clark S. Cox III clarkcox3@gmail.com
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