Web Form: Subj: Jawi letters

Jeremy Carroll jjc at hplb.hpl.hp.com
Thu Jul 22 13:44:17 CEST 2004


(Unicode deleted from cc:)

Speechways at aol.com wrote:
> 2004.  Each spoken, written and signed form of language in the world 
> deserves an umabiguous code, clearly defined in relation to all adjacent 
> langtags, and avoiding the problems of sub-tagging.
> Greetings from the Observatoire Linguistique in Wales (Linguasphere 
> Observatory)

Good grief! (Rising to the flame bait?)

The problems arise from languages not fitting into nice discrete boxes 
however much our political prejudices would like them to. Language 
tagging and subtagging imposes a fairly arbitrary order onto the 
network of communicative possibilities between people. The tagging and 
subtagging process simplifies the complex topology generated by the 
idiolects of the population of the planet (alive or published).

A political agenda of separateness and identity, while an ever-present 
theme in language classification, is not helpful. Subtagging assists in 
preserving some of the richness of partial intelligibility.

Jeremy







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