Re: Mixing languages on a Web site

From: Michael \(michka\) Kaplan (michka@trigeminal.com)
Date: Fri Jun 30 2000 - 16:16:05 EDT


From: <Peter_Constable@sil.org>
> "Ethiopic" is not the name of a language, by the way. Or were you counting
> scripts rather than languages?

I was referring to scripts (the message that responded to me was talking
about wanting representations of all the scripts supported by Unicode).

> I'm inclined to think that counting country-specific varieties as separate
> languages is artificially stretching things. I really doubt that someone
> from Guatemala could complain of someone from Argentina, "¿Por qué no
puede
> simplemente hablar Español de Guatemala?"

You can of course take it that way.... the difference being that in most
cases it is what people would say. I have many friends in Australia who were
quite clear that they would be saying "Why can't they just speak
Australian?" even though its what I would call English.... do it kind of
makes the point to be different when the native speaker might be different.

> Do Australians, Canadians, Brits,
> etc.; or Germans, Austrians, etc. make similar complaints of one another?

In a few cases, they did.... you will note a few translations (French
Canadian, Flemish, a few Germans) that were somewhat different. Admittedly,
in the Spanish case I had the feeling that the people I was talking to may
have had an "agenda" (wanting to promote a little national identity!) but
how many languages are indeed BASED on such an agenda? Do you truly believe
that most of the countries in the former USSR would be using Cyrillic
scripts if they had not been a part of the USSR? Languages and scripts are
often very "politically" involved. I simply chose not to judge people for
their contribution, thats all. :-)

In any case, I am more interested in examples of scripts in terms of
coverage, although new languages crop up all the time and can be very
interesting!

michka



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