From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Thu Jan 15 2004 - 15:29:39 EST
From: "Michael Everson" <everson@evertype.com>
> >I admit this exists, I don't think it's a good idea to use such weak
> >conventions, which are justified only by the fact that one is technically
> >constrained to use a restricted subset of Latin. If people could use more
> >distinctive letters in Latin, such caveats would be avoided.
>
> Well, golly. I guess we're not going to change
> 1,000 years of orthographic practice because it
> fails to meet your r
I won't change that history. That's not what I wanted. It just demonstrate
that people use the letter they have and know and the way they want to write
the language they need to communicate. Give them more choice before they
make what is seen _today_ as a silly decision, but was reasonnable at the
time they made these choices. We can't reform the history, but we must live
with the ambiguities and caveats it creates today in out modern use of these
written languages, with lots of information lost or forgotten and that we
need to rediscover to understand those texts or the way they are articulated
if they are still in use today after long times of evolutions and many
exceptions introduced by usage.
But when I see some proposals to "simplify" a language by removing some of
the distinctions found in the spoken language from a reformed or newly
create language, I always fear the risk that such simplifications will
render the initial written language unreadable by newer generations. Call it
evolution if you wish, but some choices are sometimes risky (see for example
what's happening today in Azeri culture after so many changes in a so short
period of time). I'm much more conservative face to language evolution than
what you think: I don't propose changes, but I keep the right of criticizing
some choices that have been made at one time, even if I don't want to
influence a come back to another choice: this would be also a change and as
well undesirable.
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