> >Probably because the clerks of the Habsburg Empire that
> started using typewriters in Slovakia got them from elsewhere
> and didn't use them to write Slovakian? Because Slovaks used
> Czech as their written language from the 15th to the 19th
> century?
>
> If Thais could develop their own typewriters, I don't see why
> Slovaks couldn't also do so. At least, as far as technology is
> concerned. If there were other sociolinguistic factors involved
> to explain why they wouldn't have done so, however, that's
> another matter.
>
>
> >Come on, if typewriters are any indication of a people's
> cleverness, then the QWERTY system will forever exclude western
> civilization from any claim to intelligence.
>
> Surely you know of the practical reasons for why the QWERTY
> layout was developed? (Or is the story I've heard repeatedly
> about performance limitations of the mechanisms just a load of
> dingoes kidneys?)
Yes, I know that story. It only shows that linguistic considerations
played a very minor role in the design of typewriters. The hassle of
getting a ch-key with a glyph twice as wide as all the others on a
typewriter not made for this feature would have far outweighed the
small advantage. This doesn't prove that it wouldn't have been the
linguistically right thing to do.
Otfried
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:54 EDT