Re: Unicode 3.0 press statements

From: John Cowan (jcowan@reutershealth.com)
Date: Thu Jan 20 2000 - 16:59:35 EST


Marco.Cimarosti@icl.com wrote:
>
> Hi, Janko.
>
> I feel I am polluting the list with too much off-topic stuff, so I will keep
> this private.
>
> You wrote:
> >> *** Latin script
> >> (...)
> >As far as I know here somewhere must be Serbian -- especially counting
> >people out of the main country (Serbs in Bosnia, for example). If 10M is
> >not reliable, although cited somewhere, 8M is much more certain number.
>
> >> *** Cyrillic script
> >> (...)
> >As far as I know, here somewhere must be Serbian again.
>
> I quoted from the Ethnologue:
> >*** Languages using more than one script
> > 21000000 SERBO-CROATIAN (Latin and Cyrillic)
>
> O yes. I know that the current vogue is to turn that hyphen into a comma.
> The fact is that I didn't know how to split that 21M. Now I have your 8..10M
> estimate, but I still have my doubts about what a language is and what it
> would be without an army.
>
> I quoted from the Ethnologue:
> > 37000000 ITALIAN
> > 8974000 LOMBARD
>
> And this makes my doubts bigger: I am from Lombardy, Italy: in what line
> have I been counted? Lombardy does not have an army (or I hope not, but
> maybe yes: we have indipendentists going around in green shirts trying to
> beat immigrants), so I never really perceived these as two different
> languages; I use one or the other according to the situation; I freely mix
> them; sometimes I have problems understanding which is which, so why are
> they in the list?
>
> You wrote:
> >Now I am becoming affraid that people who had to make lists like this
> >supported bombing just to solve such problems, like "where to count
> >them" (joke).
>
> I am still trying to figure out the reason why. It is certainly not the
> fault of people running the Ethnologue web site, they are too buisi counting
> languages. Nor mine: I was too buisy doing demonstrations against NATO and
> becoming a father.
>
> Ciao.
> Marco

-- 

Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! || John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com> Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau, || http://www.reutershealth.com Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau, || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Und trank die Milch vom Paradies. -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)



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