Language attributes- what are they?

John Cowan jcowan at reutershealth.com
Sun Jan 2 23:11:35 CET 2005


Tex Texin scripsit:

> Well I admit that the solution of calling the English-sorted Old Norse text an
> English document is bizarre and unappealing, but let's also admit the example
> is a bit odd. What does it mean to sort Old Norse by English rules where  some
> of the characters are not used in English? It's even a stretch for Swedish...

Because those of us anglophones who are Old Norse scholars (or Old English
scholars) have rules for sorting words that include thorn, and those rules
say "sort thorn after t".  (There are other, more rarely used practices:
see Michael Everson's wonderful paper "On Sorting )BÞORN" at
http://www.evertype.com/standards/wynnyogh/thorn.html .)

> But regardless of the details, the issue is (it seems to me) if a document is
> tagged as some language, and sorting within the content is performed in a way
> that does not correspond to the language of the document, then would that
> surprise readers of that language (as opposed to other languages)? I think the
> answer is yes and that sorting is an attribute of language.

This argument proves too much (or too little); language is certainly an
important attribute of locale, partly because it acts as a fairly good
surrogate for culture.  But I do not think we have substantive disagreement
any more.

> (I am finding it hard even to write about sorting text without using
> language-based names for the collation or referencing language in some way.)

It's hard to talk about culture without mentioning language, but the American
culture is tolerably distinct from American English even so.

-- 
There are three kinds of people in the world:   John Cowan
those who can count,                            http://www.reutershealth.com
and those who can't.                            jcowan at reutershealth.com


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