Subject: [Ltru] ANSI and ISO 15924 (was: Re: (no subject))

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 06:45:47 -0800

Marion Gunn <mgunn at egt dot ie> wrote:

>> I don't know what position ANSI has taken on this subject, if any, 
>> and I really don't care.
>
> US (ANSI?) currently holds a majority of seats on the ISO 15924/RA AC 
> which rejected IPA.

Neither the RA nor the JAC is defined in terms of representatives of 
nations (U.S.) or national SDOs (ANSI).  If you mean that "Americans" 
currently hold a majority, then that is not the same thing, and once 
again implies that Americans cannot make independent decision or hold 
opinions outside of what their government or SDO tells them.

The six-member JAC currently contains three members from the U.S. (not a 
majority), one from Norway, one from France, and one from Ireland.  I 
know you do not consider Michael to be "from" Ireland but I guarantee 
you he does not consider himself an American mouthpiece.

>> I would appreciate not having to make this vacuous and non- 
>> productive point again
>
> Ensuring internationally-balanced ACs would help -

That is your opinion.  It presumes that technical judgments, such as 
whether IPA is an application of the Latin script or a separate script 
altogether, are influenced by whether one is American or not.  I don't 
see the connection there.  It isn't related to the degree of adoption of 
IPA in the U.S. versus other countries; if anything, I would think that 
the relatively low usage of IPA in the U.S. would make it *more* likely 
to be viewed as a separate script.

> failing that, please bear in mind that your own ISO National Body 
> (which your address tells me is ANSI) is still in the strongest 
> position to help/ hinder all such requests.

Does ANSI in fact have influence over ISO 15924/RA-JAC?  Does any 
national body?

--
Doug Ewell  *  Fullerton, California, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
http://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html
http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages 

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From: "Randy Presuhn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 11:03:00 -0800

Hi -

> From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
> To: "LTRU Working Group" <[email-masked]>
> Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 6:45 AM
> Subject: [Ltru] ANSI and ISO 15924 (was: Re: (no subject))
...
> Does ANSI in fact have influence over ISO 15924/RA-JAC?  Does any 
...

As WG co-chair:

Speculation about ISO political problems (real or imagined) is
not this WG's job.  (I know Doug didn't initiate this; I'm just
taking this opportunity to put the discussion back on track.)

The question before us here is whether we believe IPA should be
registered as a script.  Before we get to *that* question, we
need to reach consensus on how we'd like to handle transcriptions.
We're progressing, but I'm not ready to say we're "there" yet.
If the agreement we eventually reach requires registration of one
or more scripts, then we can deal with figuring out how to make it
happen.

Randy, ltru co-chair

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 14:45:36 -0500

> We're progressing, but I'm not ready to say we're "there" yet.

Here's my rough semantic model for the types of subtags.

        If a document is in the wrong *language*, you can't read it
        it all.

        If a document is in the wrong *script*, you can decipher it with
        more or less pain, but reading it fluently is too hard.

        If a document is in the wrong *variant*, you can read it but
        there will be occasional oddities, incongruities, and possible
        miscomprehensions; you probably couldn't write this document
        yourself but would use your own variant.

We discriminate between national and other variants for reasons partly
historical, partly practical.

By this model, IPA, Americanist, UPA, LMA, etc. are functionally scripts,
and things like broad vs. narrow transcriptions are functionally variants.

> or more scripts, then we can deal with figuring out how to make it

Unless, of course, we cannot make it happen at all.  In which case
we will need a new agreement.  But I agree with you on the proper
order of these things.

-- 
John Cowan  [email-masked]  http://ccil.org/~cowan
Any sufficiently-complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc,
informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.
        --Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming (rules 1-9 are unknown)

---

From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 13:47:28 -0800

I agree also with this analysis.

---

From: Addison Phillips <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2006 14:01:11 -0800

+1

Mark Davis wrote:
> On 11/3/06, *John Cowan* <[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
> 
>     Randy Presuhn scripsit:
> 
>     John Cowan  [email-masked]
>     <mailto:[email-masked]>  http://ccil.org/~cowan
>     [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 

-- 
Addison Phillips
Globalization Architect -- Yahoo! Inc.

Internationalization is an architecture.
It is not a feature.

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 17:58:02 -0500

> >    Here's my rough semantic model for the types of subtags.

Maybe this text (improved a bit) should go somewhere in 4646bis?

-- 
Values of beeta will give rise to dom!          John Cowan
(5th/6th edition 'mv' said this if you tried    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
to rename '.' or '..' entries; see              [email-masked]
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/odd.html)

---

From: "Debbie Garside" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 23:13:44 -0000

> Maybe this text (improved a bit) should go somewhere in 4646bis?

I think that is a very good idea.  I think it explains clearly the reasons
for tagging content wisely.

Best regards

Debbie

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2006 06:34:11 +0100

John Cowan wrote:

> If a document is in the wrong *language*, you can't read it it all.

> more or less pain, but reading it fluently is too hard.

Depends.  For some languages I can more or less guess what it might
be about, IFF they're Latn (or maybe Latf).  For most scripts I'm
lost, no matter what language.

Frank

---

From: Peter Constable <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 22:26:14 -0800

Like Frank, John's statement wrt script seems flawed to me. 

E.g., a Central Thai speaker would understand some of a Northern Thai
text if it were written in Thai script but would not be able to make
much sense of a Northern Thai text (or even a Central Thai text) if it
were written in Lanna script. Granted, in this case, it would take less
time to learn the other script than to learn the other language, but
someone requesting content isn't typically doing so because they want to
engage in a language-learning or script-learning exercise.

E.g., consider this text: "In nujutsi na bitsiimal." You *can* read it,
though you probably have no idea what it says and aren't sure if you are
pronouncing it correctly. Or consider: "Il benti iyo xabayo" -- some of
you might get a hunch at the meaning even thought it's not a "right"
language for any of you (it's a hypothetical creation). In contrast, if
you were to show most English speakers an English text in some
shorthand, they wouldn't even know it was English. 

If it's in the wrong language but the right script, your experience may
range from it being somewhat understandable to effectively not readable
at all, depending on *how* wrong the language is.

If it's in the wrong script but the right language, your experience may
range from it looking familiar and being decipherable with some scrutiny
to being completely unrecognizable, depending on *how* wrong the script
is.

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Ellermann [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Saturday, November 04, 2006 12:34 AM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: [Ltru] Re: ANSI and ISO 15924

Frank

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2006 10:19:22 -0500

Peter Constable scripsit:

> text if it were written in Thai script

Granted.  Similarly, I can make something out of _Time_ magazine written
in French (I was forced to attempt this once for lack of English-language
reading matter), because there is some lexical similarity, especially
in technical words, and I know what the current issues of the day are,
whereas simpler French texts defeat me.

(It seems to me that English, or the English/Scots pair, are exceptionally
isolated as languages go; the nearest relatives have effectively zero
cross-comprehension, and even the similarity to French is apparent only
in writing and depends deeply on the subject matter.)

Nevertheless, given two languages picked at random, the degree of mutual
intelligibility will be zero.

> but would not be able to make much sense of a Northern Thai text
> (or even a Central Thai text) if it were written in Lanna script.

When I said "decipher", I meant it literally: with the help of a cipher
table mapping one to the other.  In some truly multiscript languages like
Mongolian, no such table is possible, admitted, and I could not read or
even decipher English in Arabic script, because I can't tell when one
letter stops and another begins -- it's all wiggle to me.  Nevertheless,
the effort to read en-kata, for example, would be hugely less, despite the
inadequacy of the representation, than the effort to read Japanese itself.

> E.g., consider this text: "In nujutsi na bitsiimal." You *can* read it,

That's an equivoque on "read".  When I use "read", I am referring to the
primary sense, "to look at or otherwise scan (as letters or other symbols
representing words or sentences) with mental formulation of the words
or sentences represented" (NID3).  Here there is no mental formulation:
I don't know if this is "How now, brown cow!" or "In the beginning was
the Word."

(Two Google hits for "nujutsi", one in Greenlandic, another in German,
evidently a parodic proper name; none at all for "bitsiimal".)

> In contrast, if you were to show most English speakers an English text
> in some shorthand, they wouldn't even know it was English.

But with a table, they could decipher it (more easily than Arabic,
though less easily than Greek or Cyrillic).

> to being completely unrecognizable, depending on *how* wrong the script

Agreed to both, but I don't think this constitutes a counter to my
original rough model.

-- 
Even the best of friends cannot                 John Cowan
attend each others' funeral.                    [email-masked]
        --Kehlog Albran, The Profit             http://www.ccil.org/~cowan

---

From: Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2006 16:47:53 +0900

>Mongolian, no such table is possible, admitted,

Why? Is it because you would need multiple tables, e.g. one for
reading Mongolian-script Mongolian based on knowledge of Cyrillic,
one for reading Mongolian-script Mongolian based on knowledge of
Latin, one for reading Latin Mongolian based on the knowledge
of the Mongolian script, and so on?

A slight complication, but not something that breaks your model,
in my opinion.

>and I could not read or
>letter stops and another begins -- it's all wiggle to me.

The effort for reading Arabic script isn't really much bigger
than for a non-cursive script. Any script whatever at first
is wiggles, or circles, or squares, or whatever, at a first
look. For Arabic, if there are no vowels, that might make it
a bit more difficult.

>Nevertheless,

Japanese and Chinese in and by itself of course need much
more knowledge for reading than just the knowledge of the
language and a simple script table, but your model seems
to almost avoid this case because it looks at languages you
know written with a script you don't know, and languages you
don't know with a script you know.

>though less easily than Greek or Cyrillic).

I doubt shorthand would be easier than Arabic. Shorthand comes
with many shorthands, and is very wiggly, too.

Regards,    Martin.

#-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, Assoc. Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-#-#  http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp       mailto:[email-masked]

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2006 10:03:04 -0500

Martin Duerst scripsit:

> Is it because you would need multiple tables, e.g. one for

No, but because the scripts are not even close to transliterations.
Mongolian script represents the phonology of 13th-century Mongolian
language, but with the loss of several crucial distinctions in both
vowels and consonants.  Phagspha script (now obsolete) also represents
13th-century Mongolian, but more accurately.  Latin (1931-37) and
Cyrillic, OTOH, represent 20th-century Mongolian.

The distinction is akin to, but more drastic than, the difference
between English orthography (which represents 15th-century English) and
a phonemic transcription of English in IPA.  Learning to read mn-Mong
when you know mn-Cyrl really is like learning to read all over again,
not merely learning to associate new symbols with familiar sound patterns.
Learning to write it is even harder.

-- 
Babies are born as a result of the              John Cowan
mating between men and women, and most          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
men and women enjoy mating.                     [email-masked]
    --Isaac Asimov in Earth: Our Crowded Spaceship

---

From: Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 07 Nov 2006 16:23:28 +0900

>Cyrillic, OTOH, represent 20th-century Mongolian.

So this has nothing to do with the fact that Mongolian can conventionally
be written with multiple scripts, but just applies to mn-Mong, and
is just an example of the general fact that the less an orthography
(language+script+convention) is phonemic, the more difficult it is
to get used to it. Chinese, and even more Japanese, as I have mentioned
before, would be more extreme examples.

Regards,    Martin.