RE: Linguistic precedence

From: jarkko.hietaniemi@nokia.com
Date: Fri Jun 16 2000 - 10:44:54 EDT


> I suppose it says POBLACHT NA hIODÁILE, which would be correct, as h- is a
> mutation (the nominative is IODÁIL) and the rule in Irish is that this and
> other mutations (mB-, gC-, nD-, bhF-, nG-, bP-, tS-, dT-) are
> not to be capitalized. Writing POBLACHT NA HIODÁILE would in fact be an
error.

Cool. Or horrible, if you have to write software to handle this :-)

> Just another amazing feature of human language which automatic algorithms
> have trouble with. Important for database entry and things like that:
> software that insists that the first letter be capitalized or that all
> letters be capitalized is utterly evil. :-)

This reminds me of one pet peeve of mine: you can spot i18n/10n piece of
software written
by an English *) speaker pretty quick by checking whether the names of
weekdays/months/languages are Capitalized... saying
"Maanantai/Tammikuu/Suomi" is very wrong, it should be
"maanantai/january/suomi" (Monday/January/Finnish).

*) or a German, Nederlande, Afrikaans, Catalan, Cymraeg, Gaeilge, or Latine
speaker
   (apologies for inevitable typos) -- but pretty much all European
languages use
   lowercase, as far as I know. (The Celtic languages seem to dig mIxEd
CaSe...)

-- 
Jarkko Hietaniemi <jarkko.hietaniemi@nokia.com>
 
> 



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