Re: Terminology (was: Latin glottal stop in ID in NWT, Canada)

On Fri, 23 Oct 2015 08:53:15 +0100, Richard Wordingham wrote:

> I think you're making the mistake of assuming that the Unicode Standard
> is written in English, rather than some jargon that is confusingly like it.

The idea that some technical specification is not written in good English, is generally an illusion produced by the very nature of the content. More specifically about TUS, I have a strong confidence about accurate expression, that happens to be illustrated by the following quotation from the incriminated chapter (highlighting uppercase added):

>>> Additional information can be found throughout the other chapters of this core specification for the Unicode Standard. However, because of the need to keep extended discussions of scripts, sets of symbols, and other characters READABLE, material in other chapters is not always labeled as to its normative or informative status.
http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode8.0.0/ch03.pdf#G22672

> I would like an English translation of Chapter 3 'Conformance',

I guess that there may be some need of a *manual*, in the spirit that led the French translator to adding annotations.
May you please quote some examples of what you wish to see expressed in a different way?

> 'Latin script', in so far as it is translatable, translates into
> English as 'Roman alphabet'.

I know your expertise from previous threads, but I've no means to adhere to the equivalence you put between a script and an alphabet.
The delusion I point out in quotations about "Roman alphabet," or alternately but way worse, the hypocrisy, is that while a handful of diacritics are certainly supported in order to spell French names in a reasonable and legible way, and while the æ and œ letters can scarcely be registered as "ae" or "oe" in Canada, other letters of the Latin (well, say, Roman) script are excluded, refused, and banned. And that is justified by telling people that a glottal stop isn't part of the Roman alphabet. "é" isn't neither, as this character is not a part of the alphabet, just to take the one that is on *all* Canadian traditional keyboards. Nor is œ, which is on none of them [but on Canadian Multilingual Standard]. Agreed, I haven't been there to look into their data base and at the cited printer.

> In the language of the TUS, the word
> 'alphabet' has a more restricted meaning, whereby, for example, the
> Thai alphabet is not used for the Thai language! The Thai alphabet is,
> however, used for the Pali language and is promoted for Pattani Malay.
> When the characters of the Thai alphabet are used for the Thai
> language, they are used as an 'abugida', not as an 'alphabet'.)

Again, I do know nothing about Thai, but if in TUS an abugida can be addressed to as an alphabet if the same is used as such, it seems to me that the word 'alphabet' has a pretty extended meaning in TUS.

In any case, isolating an arbitrary subset inside our Latin script and promoting it as the so-called Roman alphabet to get some pretext for refusing that compatriots or strangers bear their real and choosen names, [quote] IS A SERIOUS INSULT [/quote].

Additionally, at the age of Unicode, this results in being as well an insult to the whole work of the Consortium.

Marcel
Received on Fri Oct 23 2015 - 06:35:36 CDT