From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Fri Oct 17 2003 - 13:05:58 CST
On 17/10/2003 10:18, Patrick Andries wrote:
>----- Message d'origine -----
>De: "Marco Cimarosti" <marco.cimarosti@essetre.it>
>
>
>>Languages, such as Swahili, which use prefixes instead than suffixes will
>>
>>
>be
>
>
>>encoded in "logical order", i.e. with the combining prefix after the root.
>>It will be the task of the uttering engine to reorder the prefix. E.g.,
>>
>>
>the
>
>
>>Swahili word "watu" (plural of "mtu" = "man") will be encoded as <SWAHILI
>>NOUN TU> + <SWAHILI COMBINING INFLECTION PLURAL FOR PEOPLE> and, in
>>
>>
>theory,
>
>
>>it will be rendered as "watu". In practice, it will always be rendered as
>>"-tu wa-" because no one will invest in implementing Swahili rendering.
>>
>>
>
>I believe there is a strong case for Bantu character unification here, we
>don't want to have twenty or so class characters for each bantu language or
>dialect. A new Rapporteur Group ?
>
>
>
If so, isn't there a case also for unification of Germanic languages? It
is clear that at this level many words are common between English,
German, Dutch, Swedish etc. although pronounced differently in the
different languages. Even the detail that Swedish definite articles are
suffixes can be dealt with by OpenLex as a rendering detail. And there
is the precedent of the unification of CJK characters across Chinese
"dialects" whose pronunciation differs just as widely. The scheme could
perhaps be extended across more of the Indo-European language family.
:-)
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/
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