Re: writing in an alphabet with fewer letters: letter replacements

From: Richard Wordingham <richard.wordingham_at_ntlworld.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2013 08:45:25 +0100

On Thu, 04 Jul 2013 22:19:11 -0700
Stephan Stiller <stephan.stiller_at_gmail.com> wrote:

> I know of standards for transcribing foreign alphabets (by /target/
> locale – Are they relevant here? If so, which?), but

This may well depend on both source and target locale! How often
will locale have to be broken down on a non-local basis? Different
newspapers in the same city may have different conventions!

> ...there must also
> be popular practices (by /source/ locale) that have developed among
> each locale's residents for traveling.

Also old conventions for limited telegraphic equipment and computer
systems. For example, there is a Romanian tradition of converting
combining squiggle below to a following 'z'. I've not seen that
tradition used by British newspapers - the squiggle is just dropped.
I've seen French comments in Fortran that just drop all the accents -
most disconcerting to read!

Richard.
Received on Fri Jul 05 2013 - 02:48:12 CDT

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