An assessment of the Unicode standard

[Thorsten Kampe]

* Chris Jones (Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:22:00 -0400)

Is the implication that the principal usefulness of such languages as
Hindi and "other Indian languages" is us selling "things" to them..? I
am not from these climes but all the same, I do find you tone of voice
rather offensive, considering that you are referring to a culture that's
about 3000 years older and 3000 richer than ours and certainly deserves
our respect.

Neil was obviously talking about Devanagari. Please also mind the
principal difference between Neil's "also useful" and your "principal
useful(ness)".

Thorsten

 

[Antoine Pitrou]

Why should the larger world
keep supporting such antiquated languages and character sets through
Unicode? What purpose does this serve? Are we merely trying to make
everyone happy? A sort of Utopian free-language-love-fest-kinda-
thing?

Can you go and troll somewhere else?

Thanks.

Antoine.

 

[Thorsten Kampe]

* John Machin (Sat, 29 Aug 2009 17:20:47 -0700 (PDT))

The Chinese language is more widely spoken than English, is quite
capable of expression in ASCII ("r tongzhi shi sha gua") and doesn't
have those pesky it's/its problems.

You could also put it differently: the Chinese language (like any other
language) doesn't even have "characters". It's really funny to see how
someone who rants about Unicode doesn't event knows the most basic
facts.

Thorsten

 

[Hendrik van Rooyen]

The Chinese language is more widely spoken than English, is quite
capable of expression in ASCII ("r tongzhi shi sha gua") and doesn't
have those pesky it's/its problems.


... for expressing the sounds of a very limited number of languages,
and English is *NOT* one of those.

I suspect that the alphabet is not ideal for representing the sounds of _any_
language, and I would look for my proof in the plethora of things that we use
when writing, other than the bare A-Z. - Punctuation, diacritics...

But what really started me thinking, after reading this post of John's, read
with Dennis'. - on the dissimilarity of the spoken and written Chinese - was
the basic dichotomy of the two systems - a symbol for a sound vs a symbol for
a word or an idea.

I know that when I read, I do not actually read the characters, I recognize
words, and only fall back to messing with characters when I hit something
unfamiliar.

So It would seem to me that r's "utopia" could sooner be realized if the
former system were abandoned in favour of the latter. - and Horrors! The
language of choice would not be English!

Not that I agree that it would be a Utopia, whatever the language - more like
a nightmare of Orwellian proportions - because the language you get taught
first, moulds the way you think. And I know from personal experience that
there are concepts that can be succinctly expressed in one language, that
takes a lot of wordy handwaving to get across in another. So diversity would
be less, creativity would suffer due to lack of cross pollination, and
progress would slow or stop.

- Hendrik

 

[r]

How do we distinguish resume from résumé without accents?

This is another quirk of some languages that befuddles me. What is
with the ongoing language pronunciation tutorial some languages have
turned into -- French is a good example (*puke*). Do you *really* need
those squiggly lines and cues above letters so you won't forget how to
pronounce a word. Pure ridiculousness!

Even when we succeed in banning all languages that can't be written using
A-Z, what do we do about the vast number of legacy documents? How do we
write about obsolete English letters like Ð and Þ without Unicode?

Who gives a fig about obsolete languages, thank god they are dead and
let's move on!!

World population: 6.7 billion

Number of native Mandarin speakers: 873 million
Number of native Hindi speakers: 370 million
Number of native Spanish speakers: 350 million
Number of native English speakers: 340 million

Total number of Mandarin speakers: 1051 million
Total number of English speakers: 510 million

http://www.vistawide.com/languages/top_30_languages.htm

I was actually referring to countries where the majority of people
*actually* know what a computer is and how to use it... If there
culture has not caught up with western technology yet they are doomed
to the fate of native American Indians.

Whichever way you look at it, we should all convert to Mandarin, not
English. Looks like we still need Unicode.

see my last comment

(snip entertaining assumptions)

Yes, because language differences have utterly destroyed us so many times in
the past!

Have you thought about the difference between China, with one culture and
one spoken language for thousands of years, and Europe, with dozens of
competing cultures, competing governments, and alternate languages for just
as long? If multiple languages are so harmful, why was it the British,
French, Japanese, Russians, Germans, Italians, Austrians, Hungarians and
Americans who were occupying China during the Opium Wars and the Boxer
Rebellion, instead of the other way around?

Strength comes from diversity, not monoculture.

No strength comes from superior firepower. The Chinese culture stop
evolving thousands of years ago. Who invented gun powder? Yes the
Chinese and all they could do with it was create fireworks. Europeans
took gun powered and started a revolution that changes the world
forever -- for better and for worse, but that is how advancements
work. It wasn't until western influence came along and finally nudged
china into the 21st century. Europeans seek out technology and aren't
dragged down by an antiquated culture which is good for innovation. If
China with it's huge population thought like a European, they would
rule the earth for 10,000 years.

 

[r]

Thorsten

Hmm, I wonder who's sock puppet you are Thorsten?

 

[John Machin]

        China has one WRITTEN language -- It has multiple SPOKEN languages

.... hence Chinese movies have subtitles in Chinese. And it can't
really be called one written language. For a start there are the
Traditional characters and the Simplified characters. Then there are
regional variations and add-ons e.g. the Hong Kong Special Character
Set (now added into Unicode): not academic-only stuff, includes
surnames, the "Hang" in Hang Seng Index and Hang Seng Bank, and the
5th character of the Chinese name of The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking
Corporation Limited on the banknotes it issues.

(the main two being mandarin and cantonese -- with enough differences
between them that they might as well be spanish vs italian)

Mandarin and Cantonese are groups of languages/dialects. Rough figures
(millions): Mandarin 850, Wu 90, Min and Cantonese about 70 each. The
intelligibility comparison is more like Romanian vs Portuguese, or
Icelandic vs Dutch. I've heard that the PLA used Shanghainese (Wu
group) as code talkers just like the USMC used Navajos.

 

[r]

On Aug 30, 7:11 am, Hendrik van Rooyen <[email protected]>
wrote:
(snip)

I suspect that the alphabet is not ideal for representing the sounds of _any_
language, and I would look for my proof in the plethora of things that we use
when writing, other than the bare A-Z.   - Punctuation, diacritics...

It can be made better and if that means add/removing letters or
redefining what a letter represents i am fine with that. I know first
hand the hypocrisy of the English language. I am thinking more on the
lines of English redux!

Not that I agree that it would be a Utopia, whatever the language  - more like
a nightmare of Orwellian proportions - because the language you get taught
first, moulds the way you think.  And I know from personal experience that
there are concepts that can be succinctly expressed in one language, that
takes a lot of wordy handwaving to get across in another.  So diversity would
be less, creativity would suffer due to lack of cross pollination, and
progress would slow or stop.

We already live in a Orwellian language nightmare. Have you seen much
change to the English language in your lifetime? i haven't. A language
must constantly evolve and trim the excess cruft that pollutes it. And
English has a mountain of cruft! After all our years on this planet i
think it's high time to perfect a simplified language for world-wide
usage.

 

[r]

On Aug 30, 7:11 am, Hendrik van Rooyen <[email protected]>
wrote:
(snip)

Not that I agree that it would be a Utopia, whatever the language  - more like
a nightmare of Orwellian proportions - because the language you get taught
first, moulds the way you think.  And I know from personal experience that
there are concepts that can be succinctly expressed in one language, that
takes a lot of wordy handwaving to get across in another.  So diversity would
be less, creativity would suffer due to lack of cross pollination, and
progress would slow or stop.

- Hendrik

What makes you think that diversity is lost with a single language? I
say more pollination will occur and the seed will be more potent since
all parties will contribute to the same pool. Sure there will be
idioms of different regions but that is to be expected. But at least
then i could make international crank calls without the language
barrier ;-)

 

[Jan Kaliszewski]

a nightmare of Orwellian proportions - because the language you get
taught first, moulds the way you think. And I know from personal
experience that
there are concepts that can be succinctly expressed in one language, that
takes a lot of wordy handwaving to get across in another. So diversity
would be less, creativity would suffer due to lack of cross pollination,
and progress would slow or stop.

That's the point! Even in the case of programming languages we say about
'culture' and 'way of thinking' connected with each of them, though
after all they are only formal constructs.

In case of natural languages it's incomparably richer and more complex.
Each natural language has richness of culture and ages of history
-- behind that language and recorded in it in many ways.

Most probably such an unification would mean terrible impoverishment
of our (humans') culture and, as a result, terrible squandering of our
intelectual, emotional, cognitive etc. potential -- especially if such
unification were a result of intentional policy (and not of a slow and
'patient' process of synthesis).

*j

 

[Paul Boddie]

It can be made better and if that means add/removing letters or
redefining what a letter represents i am fine with that. I know first
hand the hypocrisy of the English language. I am thinking more on the
lines of English redux!

Elsewhere in this thread you've written...

"This is another quirk of some languages that befuddles me. What is
with the ongoing language pronunciation tutorial some languages have
turned into -- French is a good example (*puke*). Do you *really* need
those squiggly lines and cues above letters so you won't forget how to
pronounce a word. Pure ridiculousness!"

And, in fact, there have been schemes to simplify written English such
as Initial Teaching Alphabet:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_Teaching_Alphabet

I imagine that this is the first time you've heard of it, though.

[...]

We already live in a Orwellian language nightmare. Have you seen much
change to the English language in your lifetime? i haven't.

Then you aren't paying attention. Especially in places where English
isn't the first language, there is a lot of modification of English
that is then considered an acceptable version of the language - this
is one way in which languages change.

Elsewhere, you wrote this...

"What makes you think that diversity is lost with a single language? I
say more pollination will occur and the seed will be more potent since
all parties will contribute to the same pool."

Parties are contributing to the same language already. It's just not
the only language that they contribute to.

From what you've written, I get the impression that you don't really
know any other languages, don't have much experience with non-native
users of your own language, are oblivious to how languages change, and
are oblivious to the existence of various attempts to "improve" the
English language in the past in ways similar to those you appear to
advocate, albeit incoherently: do you want to know how to pronounce a
word from its spelling or not?

Add to that a complete lack of appreciation for the relationship
between language and culture, along with a perverted application of
evolutionary models to such things, and you come across as a lazy
cultural supremacist who regards everyone else's language as
superfluous apart from his own. If you're just having problems with
UnicodeDecodeError, at least have the honesty to say so instead of
parading something not too short of bigotry in a public forum.

Paul

 

[r]

On 30 Aug, 14:49, r <[email protected]> wrote:

Then you aren't paying attention.
....(snip: defamation of character)

Hold the phone Paul you are calling me a retarded bigot and i don't
much appreciate that. I think you are completely misinterpreting my
post. i and i ask you read it again especially this part...

BUT STOP!, before i go any further i want to respond to what i know
will be condemnation from the sociology nuts out there. Yes
multiculturalism is great, yes art is great, but if you can't see how
the ability to communicate is severely damperd by multi-languages
then
you only *feel* with your heart but you apparently have no ability to
reason with your mind intelligently.

I don't really care what language we adopt as long as we choose *only*
one and then seek to perfect it to perfection. And also that this
*one* language use simplicity as it's model. English sucks, but
compared to traditional Chinese and Egyptian Hieroglyphs it's a god
send.

I think a good language would combine the best of the popular world
languages into one super language for all. The same thing Python did
for programming. But of course programming is not as evolved as
natural language so we will need multiple programming languages for
quite some time...

And just as the internet enabled worldwide instant communication, the
unification of all languages will cause a Renaissance of sorts for
coloaboration which in turn will beget innovation of enormous
proportions. The ability to communicate unhampered is in everyones
best interest.

---------------------------------------
History Lesson and the laws of Nature
---------------------------------------
Look history is great but i am more concerned with the future. Learn
the lessons of the past, move on, and live for the future. If you want
to study the hair styles of Neanderthal women be my guest. Anybody
with half a brain knows the one world government and language is
coming. Why stop evolution, it is our destiny and it will improve the
human experience.

[Warning: facts of life ahead!!]
I'll bet you weep and moan for the native Americans who where
slaughtered don't you? Yes they suffered a tragic death as have many
poor souls throughout history and yes they also contributed to human
history and experience, but their time had come and they can only
blame themselfs for it. They stopped evolving, and when you stop
evolving you get left behind. We can't win wars with bows and arrows
in the 21st century, we can't fly to the moon on horse back, And you
damn sure can smoke a peace pipe and make all the bad things
disappear.

Nature can be cruel and unjust at times, but progress is absolute and
that is all mother nature (and myself to some extent) really cares
about. Without the survival of the fittest nothing you see, feel,
touch, or experience would be. The universe would collapse upon itself
and cease to exist. The system works because it is perfect. Don't
knock that which you do not understand, or, you refuse to understand..

We are but pawns in an ever evolving higher order entity. And when
this entity no longer has a use for us, we will be history...

 

[Hendrik van Rooyen]

What makes you think that diversity is lost with a single language?

I am quite sure of this - it goes deeper than mere regional differences - your
first language forms the way you think - and if we all get taught the same
language, then on a very fundamental level we will all think in a similar
way, and that loss will outweigh the normal regional or cultural differences
on which you would have to rely for your diversity.

Philip Larkin has explained the effect better than I can:

"They f*ck you up, your mom and dad,
They do not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had,
And add some extra, just for you."

I
say more pollination will occur and the seed will be more potent since
all parties will contribute to the same pool.

I think this effect, while it might be real, would be swamped by the loss of
the real diversity.

Sure there will be
idioms of different regions but that is to be expected. But at least
then i could make international crank calls without the language
barrier ;-)

You can make crank calls _now_ without a language barrier - heavy breathing is
a universally understood idiom.


- Hendrik

 

[r]

Would someone please point me to one example where this sociology or
anthropology crap has ever improved our day to day lives or moved use
into the future with great innovation? A life spend studying this
mumbo-jumbo is a complete waste of time when many other far more
important and *real* problems need solving!

To me this is nothing more than educated people going antiquing on a
Saturday afternoon! All they are going to find is more useless,
overpriced junk that clogs up the closets of society!

 

[Nobody]

(I wish the HTML standards people would do the same. HTML 5
should have been ASCII only (with the "&" escapes if desired)
or Unicode. No "Latin-1", no upper code pages, no JIS, etc.)

IOW, you want the HTML standards to continue to be meaningless documents,
and "HTML" to continue to mean "what browsers support".

Because that would be the likely consequence of such a stance. Japanese
websites will continue to use Shift-JIS, Japanese cellphones (or
Scandanavian cellphones aimed at the Japanese market, for that matter)
will continue to render websites which use Shift-JIS, and HTML 5 will be
just as much a pure academic exercise as all of the other HTML standards.

 

[Paul Boddie]

Hold the phone Paul you are calling me a retarded bigot and i don't
much appreciate that. I think you are completely misinterpreting my
post. i and i ask you read it again especially this part...

I didn't call you a "retarded bigot", and yet I did read your post.

[...]

I don't really care what language we adopt as long as we choose *only*
one and then seek to perfect it to perfection. And also that this
*one* language use simplicity as it's model. English sucks, but
compared to traditional Chinese and Egyptian Hieroglyphs it's a god
send.

You don't care which language it is as long as it's the one you use.
That's what this sounds like, layered on top of what you've already
written (and what you write below). How about Esperanto? You have
heard of Esperanto, right? Or take your pick from the other artificial
languages - they're relatively popular in some places where English
isn't the natural first-choice foreign language.

[...]

Look history is great but i am more concerned with the future. Learn
the lessons of the past, move on, and live for the future. If you want
to study the hair styles of Neanderthal women be my guest. Anybody
with half a brain knows the one world government and language is
coming. Why stop evolution, it is our destiny and it will improve the
human experience.

Again, we witness a distortion of scientific concepts through the use
of political themes.

[Warning: facts of life ahead!!]

Even Xah Lee's harshest critics must acknowledge that Xah delivers a
less offensive, more entertaining rant than this. At least Xah has
mastered the art of the expletive.

I'll bet you weep and moan for the native Americans who where
slaughtered don't you? Yes they suffered a tragic death as have many
poor souls throughout history and yes they also contributed to human
history and experience, but their time had come and they can only
blame themselfs for it.

You're on a slippery slope when you claim that people deserve whatever
mistreatment or misfortune comes their way through mere circumstances
of birth. I suggest you step back and actually read your messages
again and consider how others might interpret them.

I also suggest that, unless you really wish to discuss deficiencies of
Unicode with respect to Python, you don't use this list/group as a
discussion forum for your ill-informed notions of "progress", but
instead take them to a more appropriate forum where I'm sure people
will be happy to scrutinise your ideas at their leisure.

Paul

 

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

We already live in a Orwellian language nightmare. Have you seen much
change to the English language in your lifetime? i haven't. A language
must constantly evolve and trim the excess cruft that pollutes it. And

I think various collegiate dictionary publishers tend to announce
the addition of new words on a nearly annual basis.

English has a mountain of cruft! After all our years on this planet i
think it's high time to perfect a simplified language for world-wide
usage.

It's been tried... cf: esperanto

Though in the last few decades, Klingon has possibly overtaken it...

 

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

Who gives a fig about obsolete languages, thank god they are dead and
let's move on!!

IOWs, let's dump any literature more than a decade old... Since the
written text tends to follow the spoken, and speech patterns change,
making older works obsolete and quaint, if not down right
incomprehensible.

The King James bible for example...

It is via study of those obsolete languages that one learns how
language develops, what "thoughts" were of concern to the people, etc.

"corn" and "grain" (and related "kernel" and "granule") are modern
derivations of the same lost precursor word.

I was actually referring to countries where the majority of people
*actually* know what a computer is and how to use it... If there
culture has not caught up with western technology yet they are doomed
to the fate of native American Indians.

Rather elitist viewpoint... Why don't we just drop nukes on some 60%
of populated landmasses that don't have a "western" culture and avoid
the whole problem?

 

[r]

You don't care which language it is as long as it's the one you use.
That's what this sounds like, layered on top of what you've already
written (and what you write below).

I said it before and i will say it again. I DON"T CARE WHAT LANGUAGE
WE USE AS LONG AS IT IS A MODERN LANGUAGE FOUNDED ON IDEALS OF
SIMPLICITY!!!!

How about Esperanto? You have
heard of Esperanto, right? Or take your pick from the other artificial
languages - they're relatively popular in some places where English
isn't the natural first-choice foreign language.

English is by far already the de-facto lingua franca throughout the
world. However it has many shortcommings. The most prevalent being
idiotic pronunciation. You can thank neo-nazi-linguist and your third
grade language teachers for this brainwashing. Academias raping of
languages has been going on for centuries.

Again, we witness a distortion of scientific concepts through the use
of political themes.

You can deny the holocaust all you want but it still happened and so
too shall the great unity! Sadly because of cultural and social
fanatics like yourself, it will probably take another great war to
usher in the new order.

Even Xah Lee's harshest critics must acknowledge that Xah delivers a
less offensive, more entertaining rant than this. At least Xah has
mastered the art of the expletive.

So you are advocating for me to use derogatory statements in my post,
no thanks i need not resort to adolescent rants to argue my points.
And why do you continue to compare me to XL. Has XL *ever* helped a
python user in this forum? I have, many times. I am *actually* a
python programmer who cares about Python and my posts bring much vigor
and intelligence to an otherwise boring NG -- like me or not.

You're on a slippery slope when you claim that people deserve whatever
mistreatment or misfortune comes their way through mere circumstances
of birth. I suggest you step back and actually read your messages
again and consider how others might interpret them.

Paul: civilizations rise and fall, this is beyond our control. Every
great power will utter fail at some point. Some die out like a slow
burning candle, others go quickly and painfully from defeating blows
in war time. This is an eventuality you must face friend. This whole
save the whales BS is really getting on my nerves! Stop trying to play
God Paul, it is not your decision when and where the blade shall
fall.

When a people stop evolving and no longer have anything productive to
give to evolution, evolution stamps them out. If the Indians had
developed gun power and industrialized America they might be running
more than merely a casino. Oh No! Was that out of line, you will
probably think so.

Stay in know and you shall endure...

 

[r]

Because that would be the likely consequence of such a stance. Japanese
websites will continue to use Shift-JIS, Japanese cellphones (or
Scandanavian cellphones aimed at the Japanese market, for that matter)
will continue to render websites which use Shift-JIS, and HTML 5 will be
just as much a pure academic exercise as all of the other HTML standards.

Yes and this keep-everyone-happy crap will go on for centuries.
Unicode will then turn into another elephant sized bloatware standard
that only VB and MSDN, M$ Office, and Adobe PDF can hold a candle to.
Who cares, hard drives can hold terabytes of useless junk, right?

This is starting to border on OCD tendencies and i for one am getting
very nervous.