RE: PH User Community Litmus Test?

From: James Kass (jameskass@att.net)
Date: Tue Jun 01 2004 - 22:07:00 CDT

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    Mike Ayers wrote,

    > So...
    >
    > All those kids I went to school with... You know, the ones who
    > couldn't spell so well, the ones that didn't know their grammar, the ones
    > that just didn't care...
    >
    > They're not members of the Latin script user community?
    >
    > Ummm... I'm going to have to call horsepucky on this one.

    Somebody who can only make an "X" to indicate agreement on
    a document that he or she can't even read isn't a member of
    that script's user community.

    Illiterates aren't members of any script's user community, but
    it's agreed that people who do use a script, even though their
    talents and skills might lie in areas other than grammar or
    spelling, are members.

    Everybody might be a potential member of a user community.
    In the case of PH, this might be for alphabet charts or in-line
    characters showing the development of the alphabet.

    So, my original opening barb was poorly phrased. Instead of
    saying 'are not members', I should've said 'might not be members'.

    The point I was trying to make was aimed at those who deal only
    with material which has been *transliterated* from PH into
    Hebrew. Although such people are members of the Hebrew script
    user community, if they aren't familiar with the PH letters, then
    they might not be members of the PH script user community.

    Best regards,

    James Kass


    attached mail follows:


    > From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org]On
    > Behalf Of jameskass@att.net
    > Sent: Friday, May 28, 2004 9:41 PM

    > It is respectfully suggested that anyone who is not able to spot
    > the errors on this page...
    > http://www.kchanson.com/ANCDOCS/westsem/elkerak.html
    > ...in the transliteration (and translation) of the inscription within
    > (let's be gracious here) ten or fifteen seconds, without the aid of
    > an alphabet chart, is not a member of the script's user community.

            So...

            All those kids I went to school with... You know, the ones who
    couldn't spell so well, the ones that didn't know their grammar, the ones
    that just didn't care...

            They're not members of the Latin script user community?

            Ummm... I'm going to have to call horsepucky on this one.

            I'm a member of the Phoenician script user community, and I can't
    read a single word of it. Learning the glyphs, that's the use I get out of
    it, but it's use nonetheless.

            In any event, this whole test implies that decisions about
    Phoenician are made only with regard to the needs and desires of this "user
    group". Even when you expand your definition of the user group as I have,
    that's still not quite correct - all potential users must be considered.

    /|/|ike



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