Phonetic orthographies

[Peter Constable]

From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no
[mailto:ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Michael
Everson

> I don't know how to understand the problem people 
> have with the IPA. 

And you didn't know how to understand the problem people had with
es-americas either. But the problem was still real.


> I have a hypothesis, not intended to offend anyone. 

No offense taken, for my part.

> Some people who only learned 26-35 letters when they 
> were children playing with their building blocks and 
> refrigerator magnets and so on apparently have 
> difficulty learning new letters when they encounter 
> them later on. They look at a run of IPA or UPA or 
> something and say "I can't read that" without really 
> trying. But of course they can. 

For the vast majority of people, they *can't* read it, aren't going to
try, nor should they have to unless what they are really looking for is
a phonetic transcription.


> But unfamiliarity does not a separate script make.

Nobody has said phonetic transcriptions are a separate script. We say it
is a script variant that is significantly different from most Latin
practical orthographies, different enough to make content illegible,
unhelpful and undesirable to users except where they are specifically
looking for such content; different enough to warrant a script-variant
ID in 15924 to facilitate IT implementations that can easily
differentiate such content from "normal" orthographic content and
deliver to users the kind of content that they want.



Peter