Re: Starving people refuse to eat food aid
David DeLaney
>Hatunen <hat...@cox.net> wrote:
>>Shall we start another interminable "What is a language?" thread?
>
>What, the usual "a dialect with an army" definition has become inoperative?
Army AND a navy.
Dave "has just been reading the Beam Me Up Scotty page on tvtropes, and that
one's there" DeLaney
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
Bill Snyder
DeLaney) wrote:
>Bill Snyder <bsn...@airmail.net> wrote:
>>Hatunen <hat...@cox.net> wrote:
>>>Shall we start another interminable "What is a language?" thread?
>>
>>What, the usual "a dialect with an army" definition has become inoperative?
>
>Army AND a navy.
>
>Dave "has just been reading the Beam Me Up Scotty page on tvtropes, and that
> one's there" DeLaney
OK, I hereby amend it to "an army, a navy, and a pedant."
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank]
Kurt Busiek
> On Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:01:28 -0500, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David
> DeLaney) wrote:
>
>> Bill Snyder <bsn...@airmail.net> wrote:
>>> Hatunen <hat...@cox.net> wrote:
>>>> Shall we start another interminable "What is a language?" thread?
>>>
>>> What, the usual "a dialect with an army" definition has become inoperative?
>>
>> Army AND a navy.
>>
>> Dave "has just been reading the Beam Me Up Scotty page on tvtropes, and that
>> one's there" DeLaney
>
> OK, I hereby amend it to "an army, a navy, and a pedant."
Hey, if you can change the pedant to Rosalind Russell, you might just
have a movie there.
kdb
--
Visit http://www.busiek.com -- for all your Busiek needs!
Michał Dwużnik
> Bill Snyder <bsn...@airmail.net> wrote:
>> Hatunen <hat...@cox.net> wrote:
>>> Shall we start another interminable "What is a language?" thread?
>> What, the usual "a dialect with an army" definition has become inoperative?
>
> Army AND a navy.
>
> Dave "has just been reading the Beam Me Up Scotty page on tvtropes, and that
> one's there" DeLaney
Michal
David DeLaney
>Bill Snyder <bsn...@airmail.net> said:
>> d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
>>> Bill Snyder <bsn...@airmail.net> wrote:
>>>> What, the usual "a dialect with an army" definition has become inoperative?
>>>
>>> Army AND a navy.
>>>
>>> Dave "has just been reading the Beam Me Up Scotty page on tvtropes, and that
>>> one's there" DeLaney
>>
>> OK, I hereby amend it to "an army, a navy, and a pedant."
>
>Hey, if you can change the pedant to Rosalind Russell, you might just
>have a movie there.
Checking... ... ... the pedant appears to be complaining, if I try.
Dave
erilar
Bill Snyder <bsn...@airmail.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:01:28 -0500, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David
> DeLaney) wrote:
>
> >Bill Snyder <bsn...@airmail.net> wrote:
> >>Hatunen <hat...@cox.net> wrote:
> >>>Shall we start another interminable "What is a language?" thread?
> >>
> >>What, the usual "a dialect with an army" definition has become inoperative?
> >
> >Army AND a navy.
> >
> >Dave "has just been reading the Beam Me Up Scotty page on tvtropes, and that
> > one's there" DeLaney
>
> OK, I hereby amend it to "an army, a navy, and a pedant."
Yes, the amendment is probably vital 8-)
--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist
Keith F. Lynch
> Bill Snyder <bsn...@airmail.net> wrote:
>> Hatunen <hat...@cox.net> wrote:
>>> Shall we start another interminable "What is a language?" thread?
>> What, the usual "a dialect with an army" definition has become
>> inoperative?
> Army AND a navy.
Landlocked countries don't have their own lanugages?
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
David DeLaney
>David DeLaney <d...@vic.com> wrote:
>> Bill Snyder <bsn...@airmail.net> wrote:
>>> Hatunen <hat...@cox.net> wrote:
>>>> Shall we start another interminable "What is a language?" thread?
>
>>> What, the usual "a dialect with an army" definition has become
>>> inoperative?
>
>> Army AND a navy.
>
>Landlocked countries don't have their own lanugages?
Nobody said either one had to be _effective_.
Dave "how many divisions does the Vatican have?" DeLaney
Dorothy J Heydt
David DeLaney <d...@vic.com> wrote:
>Keith F. Lynch <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>>David DeLaney <d...@vic.com> wrote:
>>> Bill Snyder <bsn...@airmail.net> wrote:
>>>> Hatunen <hat...@cox.net> wrote:
>>>>> Shall we start another interminable "What is a language?" thread?
>>
>>>> What, the usual "a dialect with an army" definition has become
>>>> inoperative?
>>
>>> Army AND a navy.
>>
>>Landlocked countries don't have their own lanugages?
>
>Nobody said either one had to be _effective_.
>
>Dave "how many divisions does the Vatican have?" DeLaney
It was Goering who said that, if memory serves, and Churchill
commented later that, if our sources are correct and need arose,
the Vatican could call up at least nine legions.
--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at hotmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress.
Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters.
Charles Wm. Dimmick
>> Dave "how many divisions does the Vatican have?" DeLaney
>
> It was Goering who said that, if memory serves,
Stalin
Quadibloc
> David DeLaney <d...@vic.com> wrote:
> >> Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
> >>> Shall we start another interminable "What is a language?" thread?
> >> What, the usual "a dialect with an army" definition has become
> >> inoperative?
> > Army AND a navy.
> Landlocked countries don't have their own lanugages?
The difference between a dialect and a language is solely and
exclusively a *linguistic* question, and, thus, it is determined by
the degree of difference in the forms of speech - specifically, their
mutual intelligibility.
Of course, over time, if speakers of two dialects happen to be within
different political units, those dialects are more likely to diverge
into mutually-unintelligible languages.
Thus, no one claims that Inuktitut is a dialect of English, or French,
or even Cree, despite the Inuit lacking a seat at the U.N..
It is true that there are cases where languages which are
linguistically related have been falsely claimed as dialects because
of the lack of political independence of their speakers.
Thus, while the People's Republic of China recognizes Tibetan as a
language, it claims that the Cantonese language, or the Southern Min
language, and so on, despite a lack of mutual intelligibility with the
Mandarin language, are merely "dialects" of Chinese. This should be
firmly rejected as a hoax, with no support or credence given to it by
free men.
John Savard
Michał Dwużnik
> On Nov 25, 7:33 pm, "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>> David DeLaney <d...@vic.com> wrote:
>>> Bill Snyder <bsny...@airmail.net> wrote:
>>>> Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>>>>> Shall we start another interminable "What is a language?" thread?
>>>> What, the usual "a dialect with an army" definition has become
>>>> inoperative?
>>> Army AND a navy.
>> Landlocked countries don't have their own lanugages?
>
> The difference between a dialect and a language is solely and
> exclusively a *linguistic* question, and, thus, it is determined by
> the degree of difference in the forms of speech - specifically, their
> mutual intelligibility.
>
M.
R H Draney
There are so many linguists running around that you can probably find at least
one saying just about any damn fool thing you can think of....r
--
A pessimist sees the glass as half empty.
An optometrist asks whether you see the glass
more full like this?...or like this?
David DeLaney
>"Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>> David DeLaney <d...@vic.com> wrote:
>> > Bill Snyder <bsny...@airmail.net> wrote:
>> >> Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>> >>> Shall we start another interminable "What is a language?" thread?
>> >> What, the usual "a dialect with an army" definition has become
>> >> inoperative?
>> > Army AND a navy.
>> Landlocked countries don't have their own lanugages?
>
>The difference between a dialect and a language is solely and
>exclusively a *linguistic* question, and, thus, it is determined by
>the degree of difference in the forms of speech - specifically, their
>mutual intelligibility.
"We are the Folk Song Aaaaarmy / every one of us CARES!"
Dave "needs more cunning" DeLaney
Dimensional Traveler
> =?UTF-8?B?TWljaGHFgiBEd3XFvG5paw==?= filted:
>> Quadibloc wrote:
>>> On Nov 25, 7:33 pm, "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>>>> David DeLaney <d...@vic.com> wrote:
>>>>> Bill Snyder <bsny...@airmail.net> wrote:
>>>>>> Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
>>>>>>> Shall we start another interminable "What is a language?" thread?
>>>>>> What, the usual "a dialect with an army" definition has become
>>>>>> inoperative?
>>>>> Army AND a navy.
>>>> Landlocked countries don't have their own lanugages?
>>> The difference between a dialect and a language is solely and
>>> exclusively a *linguistic* question, and, thus, it is determined by
>>> the degree of difference in the forms of speech - specifically, their
>>> mutual intelligibility.
>>>
>> Is there any linguist saying that Hungarian is a dialect of e.g. German?
>
> There are so many linguists running around that you can probably find at least
> one saying just about any damn fool thing you can think of....r
>
--
"Dude. They've gone fractal."
Dorothy J Heydt
God help us, they'd better not. They're not even in the same
family.
Brian M. Scott
wrote in Ktr7p...@kithrup.com:
> In article <hen8hq$nvb$1...@news.onet.pl>, MichaÅ DwuÅŒnik
> <"michal[dot]dwuznik[at]cern[dot]ch"@think.a.bit.before.replying> wrote:
>>Quadibloc wrote:
[...]
>>> The difference between a dialect and a language is solely and
>>> exclusively a *linguistic* question, and, thus, it is determined by
>>> the degree of difference in the forms of speech - specifically, their
>>> mutual intelligibility.
This is a common misconception. In fact it is most definitely *not*
a linguistic question: it is a political and sociological question.
Some so-called dialects of Chinese differ far more than any two of
Bokmål, Nynorsk, Danish, and Swedish -- are in fact mutually
incomprehensible -- but the Chinese prefer to consider them dialects
of a single language.
>>Is there any linguist saying that Hungarian is a dialect of e.g. German?
> God help us, they'd better not. They're not even in the same family.
I did once catch someone who ought to have known better claiming that
a Basque web page was written in an obscure dialect of German, which
is just as bad.
Brian
Michał Dwużnik
>>
>> There are so many linguists running around that you can probably find
>> at least
>> one saying just about any damn fool thing you can think of....r
>>
> So linguists are closely related to economists.
>
Related? Unfortunately foolishness doesn't seem to be hereditary only...
Michal
Michał Dwużnik
> In article <hen8hq$nvb$1...@news.onet.pl>,
> Micha� Dwużnik <"michal[dot]dwuznik[at]cern[dot]ch"@think.a.bit.before.replying> wrote:
>> Quadibloc wrote:
>>> On Nov 25, 7:33 pm, "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>>>> David DeLaney <d...@vic.com> wrote:
>>>>> Bill Snyder <bsny...@airmail.net> wrote:
>>>>>> Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
>>>>>>> Shall we start another interminable "What is a language?" thread?
>>>>>> What, the usual "a dialect with an army" definition has become
>>>>>> inoperative?
>>>>> Army AND a navy.
>>>> Landlocked countries don't have their own lanugages?
>>> The difference between a dialect and a language is solely and
>>> exclusively a *linguistic* question, and, thus, it is determined by
>>> the degree of difference in the forms of speech - specifically, their
>>> mutual intelligibility.
>>>
>> Is there any linguist saying that Hungarian is a dialect of e.g. German?
>
> God help us, they'd better not. They're not even in the same
> family.
>
dialect...
Michał
Mike Ash
"Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 06:08:16 +0000, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
> wrote in Ktr7p...@kithrup.com:
>
> > In article <hen8hq$nvb$1...@news.onet.pl>, MichaÅ DwuÅŒnik
> > <"michal[dot]dwuznik[at]cern[dot]ch"@think.a.bit.before.replying> wrote:
>
> >>Quadibloc wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >>> The difference between a dialect and a language is solely and
> >>> exclusively a *linguistic* question, and, thus, it is determined by
> >>> the degree of difference in the forms of speech - specifically, their
> >>> mutual intelligibility.
>
> This is a common misconception. In fact it is most definitely *not*
> a linguistic question: it is a political and sociological question.
> Some so-called dialects of Chinese differ far more than any two of
> Bokmål, Nynorsk, Danish, and Swedish -- are in fact mutually
> incomprehensible -- but the Chinese prefer to consider them dialects
> of a single language.
In fact, it's not "definitely" either. It depends on who you're talking
to and what their motivations are. A linguist will definitely consider
those to be different languages. The Chinese government will not. Other
people, could go either way.
--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon
Brian M. Scott
mike-9DE34F.1...@news.eternal-september.org:
No. A linguist would point out that it isn't a linguistic question. A
linguist might go on to point out that despite the use of the cover term
'Chinese', the varieties differ substantially.
Brian
Brian
Dorothy J Heydt
It was on this very thread, not so long ago, that I asked Juho
(a native speaker of Finnish) whether he could understand
*any*thing of Magyar, and he said basically not, though he could
recognize a few forms when they were pointed out to him.
Anybody want to comment on the mutual (un)intelligibility of
Finnish and Estonian? I know we have native speakers of both on
this group.
Dorothy J Heydt
Ow. Ow. Ow.
Basque AFAIK isn't related to ANYthing.
Though I did know a guy once ... met him in Linguistics 100, in
fact ... who claimed that Basque and Georgian were related.
Note: he was a native speaker of both, having had one parent from
each ethnicity. So maybe he knew something ... but he didn't
provide me with any examples, and I've never found anybody else
who thought they were related.
Hatunen
<"michal[dot]dwuznik[at]cern[dot]ch"@think.a.bit.before.replying>
wrote:
>Quadibloc wrote:
That would be a real stretch, since Hungarian is actually a
dialect of Finnish and Estonian.
--
************* DAVE HATUNEN (hat...@cox.net) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *
Hatunen
While I don't speak enough Finn to ba even close to knwoing what
I'm talking about, my visits to Finland and Estonia indicate the
the two langages are close to being mutually intelligible. During
the Cold War Estonians were apparently able to watch televison
from Helsinki with little problem.
Juho can probably put it more aptly, but I get teh impression
Finn:Estonia :: Spanish:Portuguese.
Mike Ash
So even though both "language" and "dialect" have definitions in
linguistics, and the question of just what those definitions are and how
they should be applied to reality is a source of some debate among
linguists, you say that it's not a linguistic question?
I'm going to have to ask for some evidence for this claim now. To make
this fair, here's evidence for my position:
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/langdial/node2.html
That's a set of notes from a university linguistics course describing
the difference between a dialect and a language. If it's not a
linguistic question, then why would they teach it in a linguistics
course?
Juho Julkunen
(djh...@kithrup.com) says...
> In article <heo11l$c9$1...@news.onet.pl>,
> MichaÅ DwuÅ=3Fnik <"michal[dot]dwuznik[at]cern[dot]ch"@think.a.bit.before.replying> wrote:
> >Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> >> In article <hen8hq$nvb$1...@news.onet.pl>,
I had a couple of Estoninan workmen installing windows yesterday. I
could occasionally follow the thread of their conversation, if not
details. The languages are not quite mutually intelligible, but there
are lots of similarities, even if they are sometimes misleading.
("Halpa" being one common example. It means "cheap", in one sense in
Finnish, another in Estonian.) I just tried reading a relevant article,
( http://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eesti )
which I could do with some comprehension, though knowledge of context
helps a lot.
--
Juho Julkunen
R H Draney
>
>I'm going to have to ask for some evidence for this claim now. To make
>this fair, here's evidence for my position:
>
>http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/langdial/node2.html
>
>That's a set of notes from a university linguistics course describing
>the difference between a dialect and a language. If it's not a
>linguistic question, then why would they teach it in a linguistics
>course?
Because in any linguistics course, there's bound to be at least one student who
will insist on a hard-edged distinction?...r
Dorothy J Heydt
Hatunen <hat...@cox.net> wrote:
>On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 02:03:54 +0100, Micha? Dwu?nik
><"michal[dot]dwuznik[at]cern[dot]ch"@think.a.bit.before.replying>
>wrote:
>
>>Quadibloc wrote:
>>> On Nov 25, 7:33 pm, "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>>>> David DeLaney <d...@vic.com> wrote:
>>>>> Bill Snyder <bsny...@airmail.net> wrote:
>>>>>> Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>>>>> Shall we start another interminable "What is a language?" thread?
>>>>>> What, the usual "a dialect with an army" definition has become
>>>>>> inoperative?
>>>>> Army AND a navy.
>>>> Landlocked countries don't have their own lanugages?
>>>
>>> The difference between a dialect and a language is solely and
>>> exclusively a *linguistic* question, and, thus, it is determined by
>>> the degree of difference in the forms of speech - specifically, their
>>> mutual intelligibility.
>>>
>>Is there any linguist saying that Hungarian is a dialect of e.g. German?
>
>That would be a real stretch, since Hungarian is actually a
>dialect of Finnish and Estonian.
Let's say "relative." We've just recently had a statement from a
Finn that he couldn't understand Hungarian nohow, though there
were some words that looked familiar once they were pointed out
to him.
--
Dorothy J Heydt
Juho Julkunen <giao...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>In article <Kts3r...@kithrup.com>, Dorothy J Heydt
>(djh...@kithrup.com) says...
>>
>> (a native speaker of Finnish) whether he could understand
>> *any*thing of Magyar, and he said basically not, though he could
>> recognize a few forms when they were pointed out to him.
>>
>> Anybody want to comment on the mutual (un)intelligibility of
>> Finnish and Estonian? I know we have native speakers of both on
>> this group.
>
>details.
Interesting. So what language did you communicate in? English? :)
The languages are not quite mutually intelligible, but there
>are lots of similarities, even if they are sometimes misleading.
>("Halpa" being one common example. It means "cheap", in one sense in
>Finnish, another in Estonian.) I just tried reading a relevant article,
>( http://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eesti )
>which I could do with some comprehension, though knowledge of context
>helps a lot.
Thanks!
Keith F. Lynch
> =?UTF-8?B?TWljaGHFgiBEd3XFvG5paw==?= filted:
>> Is there any linguist saying that Hungarian is a dialect of
>> e.g. German?
> There are so many linguists running around that you can probably
> find at least one saying just about any damn fool thing you can
> think of....r
I doubt you'll find one who will say that Hungarian is a dialect of
German. Unless perhaps you hired him as an expert witness in a trial,
and paid him plenty of money to say whatever would help your side of
the case.
I hope that all linguists would agree that UTF-8 ought to be taken out
and shot. Who the hell is "?B?TWljaGHFgiBEd3XFvG5paw==?="? If TWlj,
as I'll call him or her for short, want to post in German or Hungarian
or Estonian, go for it, but don't post complete gibberish that looks
like two cats fought on a keyboard and the keyboard lost.
Mike Ash
"Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
> R H Draney <dado...@spamcop.net> wrote:
> > =?UTF-8?B?TWljaGHFgiBEd3XFvG5paw==?= filted:
> >> Is there any linguist saying that Hungarian is a dialect of
> >> e.g. German?
>
> > There are so many linguists running around that you can probably
> > find at least one saying just about any damn fool thing you can
> > think of....r
>
> I doubt you'll find one who will say that Hungarian is a dialect of
> German. Unless perhaps you hired him as an expert witness in a trial,
> and paid him plenty of money to say whatever would help your side of
> the case.
>
> I hope that all linguists would agree that UTF-8 ought to be taken out
> and shot.
Why would they agree on this, and what is the problem with UTF-8? I
would think that being able to represent virtually any written language
with a single ASCII-compatible encoding would be seen as a good thing by
linguists. It's certainly a good thing from my perspective.
> Who the hell is "?B?TWljaGHFgiBEd3XFvG5paw==?="? If TWlj,
> as I'll call him or her for short, want to post in German or Hungarian
> or Estonian, go for it, but don't post complete gibberish that looks
> like two cats fought on a keyboard and the keyboard lost.
Maybe you should consider getting a more modern newsreader instead of
whining about non-ASCII text?
I'm sure this will trigger some rant about how ASCII is how God intended
for Man to communicate. Hell, I have no problem if you want to use some
antiquated thing that thinks there are only 96 printable characters,
just have the sense to recognize that the problem is on *your* side.
Mike Ash
R H Draney <dado...@spamcop.net> wrote:
> Mike Ash filted:
> >
> >I'm going to have to ask for some evidence for this claim now. To make
> >this fair, here's evidence for my position:
> >
> >http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/langdial/node2.html
> >
> >That's a set of notes from a university linguistics course describing
> >the difference between a dialect and a language. If it's not a
> >linguistic question, then why would they teach it in a linguistics
> >course?
>
> Because in any linguistics course, there's bound to be at least one student
> who
> will insist on a hard-edged distinction?...r
I'm sure they'll be disappointed. That doesn't make the terms useless,
of course, any more than the fluctuating and difficult distinctions
between species makes that term useless in biology. And since this is
the first time I've heard anyone propose that linguists don't care about
language vs dialect, and NOT the first time I've heard that linguists
care about it (which statement has occasionally come directly from a
linguist) I rather doubt your explanation.
Dorothy J Heydt
Keith F. Lynch <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>> =?UTF-8?B?TWljaGHFgiBEd3XFvG5paw==?= filted:
>>> Is there any linguist saying that Hungarian is a dialect of
>>> e.g. German?
>
>> There are so many linguists running around that you can probably
>> find at least one saying just about any damn fool thing you can
>> think of....r
>
>I doubt you'll find one who will say that Hungarian is a dialect of
>German. Unless perhaps you hired him as an expert witness in a trial,
>and paid him plenty of money to say whatever would help your side of
>the case.
>
>I hope that all linguists would agree that UTF-8 ought to be taken out
>and shot. Who the hell is "?B?TWljaGHFgiBEd3XFvG5paw==?="? If TWlj,
>as I'll call him or her for short, want to post in German or Hungarian
>or Estonian, go for it, but don't post complete gibberish that looks
>like two cats fought on a keyboard and the keyboard lost.
Oh.
I am sitting here in awestruck wonder at your phrasing.
However, it's probably much less TWlj's fault than that of
his/her/its/their ISP/newsreader/editor/etcaetera.
Dorothy J Heydt
Speaking as a former linguistics major, I would venture to say
that linguists do care about language vs. dialect, but would
probably phrase it in terms of closeness of relationship and/or
mutual (un)intelligibility.
Strobe
wrote:
We engineering students used to say that the London School of Economics
always used the same question papers for final exams.
Each year, they'd just change the answers.
cryptoguy
> On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:40:21 GMT, djhe...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
>
>
>
>
>
> Heydt) wrote:
> >In article <heo11l$c...@news.onet.pl>,
> >MichaŠDwużnik <"michal[dot]dwuznik[at]cern[dot]ch"@think.a.bit.before.replying> wrote:
> >>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> >>> Micha� Dwużnik
I can confirm this. When I visited in 1985, most of the TV antennas in
Tallinn pointed towards Helsinki, and we watched a chunk of Band-Aid
on a Finnish station.
> Juho can probably put it more aptly, but I get teh impression
> Finn:Estonia :: Spanish:Portuguese.
pt
cryptoguy
> R H Draney <dadoc...@spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> > =?UTF-8?B?TWljaGHFgiBEd3XFvG5paw==?= filted:
> >> Is there any linguist saying that Hungarian is a dialect of
> >> e.g. German?
> > There are so many linguists running around that you can probably
> > find at least one saying just about any damn fool thing you can
> > think of....r
>
> I doubt you'll find one who will say that Hungarian is a dialect of
> German. Unless perhaps you hired him as an expert witness in a trial,
> and paid him plenty of money to say whatever would help your side of
> the case.
>
> I hope that all linguists would agree that UTF-8 ought to be taken out
> and shot. Who the hell is "?B?TWljaGHFgiBEd3XFvG5paw==?="? If TWlj,
> as I'll call him or her for short, want to post in German or Hungarian
> or Estonian, go for it, but don't post complete gibberish that looks
> like two cats fought on a keyboard and the keyboard lost.
Keith, the drawbacks of you antiquated SW/HW setup are embarrassing
you. *No one* but you think you're in the right on this. Get with the
times.
pt
Brian M. Scott
wrote in heq0hi$33g$5...@reader1.panix.com:
[...]
> I hope that all linguists would agree that UTF-8 ought to be taken out
> and shot. [...]
Don't be silly. Linguists have more use for UTF-8 than most.
Brian
Brian M. Scott
mike-9A9249.1...@news.eternal-september.org:
They haven't. That's the whole point. (And if I sound a bit abrupt,
it's because I've heard and had this discussion way too many times in
sci.lang.)
> and the question of just what those definitions are and how
> they should be applied to reality is a source of some debate among
> linguists, you say that it's not a linguistic question?
>
> I'm going to have to ask for some evidence for this claim now. To make
> this fair, here's evidence for my position:
>
> http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/langdial/node2.html
>
> That's a set of notes from a university linguistics course describing
> the difference between a dialect and a language. If it's not a
> linguistic question, then why would they teach it in a linguistics
> course?
If you read it carefully, you'll find that it's not describing the
difference between a dialect and a language. At most it's suggesting
a possible definition of 'dialect', and even then most of it is devoted
to showing why the definition is fairly pointless. (And it's not an
accident that the author mostly uses the term 'lect', not 'dialect'.)
And if you look at the notes as a whole, it's perfectly obvious that
the main point is that there is no single satisfactory definition.
Brian
Brian M. Scott
fcg0h5ltr0lcen0md...@4ax.com:
[...]
> Juho can probably put it more aptly, but I get teh impression
> Finn:Estonia :: Spanish:Portuguese.
This is the impression that I've got from comments in linguistic
literature, and further that in general Estonians and Portuguese
understand Finnish and Spanish, respectively, more easily than
Finns and Spaniards understand Estonian and Portuguese: Estonian
and Portuguese have undergone more extensive sound changes.
Brian
Brian M. Scott
wrote in KtsK2...@kithrup.com:
> In article <g8g0h5h2ea1p951ec...@4ax.com>, Hatunen
> <hat...@cox.net> wrote:
[...]
>>That would be a real stretch, since Hungarian is actually a dialect of
>>Finnish and Estonian.
>
> Let's say "relative." We've just recently had a statement from a Finn
> that he couldn't understand Hungarian nohow, though there were some
> words that looked familiar once they were pointed out to him.
And not even all that close a relative within Finno-Ugric.
(Traditionally the Baltic-Finnic languages have been considered to be
closest to the Saamic languages, but some recent scholars have argued
that the relatively pronounced similarities are due to contact, not to
descent from a common subnode within Finno-Ugric.)
Brian
David DeLaney
> "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>> R H Draney <dado...@spamcop.net> wrote:
>> > =?UTF-8?B?TWljaGHFgiBEd3XFvG5paw==?= filted:
>>
>> and shot.
>
>> as I'll call him or her for short, want to post in German or Hungarian
>> or Estonian, go for it, but don't post complete gibberish that looks
>> like two cats fought on a keyboard and the keyboard lost.
>
>Maybe you should consider getting a more modern newsreader instead of
>whining about non-ASCII text?
I'm using slrn, so don't blame it on any ancientness of Keith's newsreader.
I'm not interested in having popups and glyphs and squiggles when the New
Modren Newsreader decides that a given post is in Chinese, so ASCII is what's
for breakfast here.
>I'm sure this will trigger some rant about how ASCII is how God intended
>for Man to communicate.
Yep. Rant, no. Stone tablets, yes.
>Hell, I have no problem if you want to use some
>antiquated thing that thinks there are only 96 printable characters,
>just have the sense to recognize that the problem is on *your* side.
Mmm-hm. Let's all start posting to Mike in EBCDIC and see how he likes it.
Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
Juho Julkunen
> In article <MPG.257a71d85...@news.kolumbus.fi>,
> Juho Julkunen <giao...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >In article <Kts3r...@kithrup.com>, Dorothy J Heydt
> >(djh...@kithrup.com) says...
> >>
> >> It was on this very thread, not so long ago, that I asked Juho
> >> (a native speaker of Finnish) whether he could understand
> >> *any*thing of Magyar, and he said basically not, though he could
> >> recognize a few forms when they were pointed out to him.
> >>
> >> Anybody want to comment on the mutual (un)intelligibility of
> >> Finnish and Estonian? I know we have native speakers of both on
> >> this group.
> >
> >I had a couple of Estonian workmen installing windows yesterday. I
> >could occasionally follow the thread of their conversation, if not
> >details.
>
> Interesting. So what language did you communicate in? English? :)
One of them spoke Finnish I could mostly comprehend, and he seemed to
comprehend mine.
When I was last in Tallinn, I spoke English. Partly because the locals
are not terribly taken with Finns who expect everybody to understand
Finnish, insult their wares (Halpaa!), get drunk and are generally
obnoxious.
--
Juho Julkunen
Juho Julkunen
Mike Ash (mi...@mikeash.com) says...
> > I hope that all linguists would agree that UTF-8 ought to be taken out
> > and shot.
> Maybe you should consider getting a more modern newsreader instead of
> whining about non-ASCII text?
>
> I'm sure this will trigger some rant about how ASCII is how God intended
> for Man to communicate. Hell, I have no problem if you want to use some
> antiquated thing that thinks there are only 96 printable characters,
> just have the sense to recognize that the problem is on *your* side.
A friend of mine once had an online argument with an American engineer
who quite earnestly proposed that the whole world should standardise to
ASCII keyboards. People who needed characters not covered could always
enter the other letters with key codes, after all. He could not see why
this would be a problem.
Personally, I'd have invited to him to remove the keys for, say, k and
d to see how convenient it'd be for me, for example. Let alone people
who need more than three non-ASCII letters.
--
Juho Julkunen
Szymon Sokół
> In article <heq0hi$33g$5...@reader1.panix.com>,
> "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>
>> R H Draney <dado...@spamcop.net> wrote:
>>> =?UTF-8?B?TWljaGHFgiBEd3XFvG5paw==?= filted:
[----]
>> Who the hell is "?B?TWljaGHFgiBEd3XFvG5paw==?="? If TWlj,
>> as I'll call him or her for short, want to post in German or Hungarian
>> or Estonian, go for it, but don't post complete gibberish that looks
>> like two cats fought on a keyboard and the keyboard lost.
>
> Maybe you should consider getting a more modern newsreader instead of
> whining about non-ASCII text?
Actually it wouldn't help him much - everyone else (in particular, R H
Draney) would have to get a more modern newsreader. As can be seen above,
the mangled quote first appeared in R H Draney's posting.
--
Szymon Sokół (SS316-RIPE) -- Network Manager B
Computer Center, AGH - University of Science and Technology, Cracow, Poland O
http://home.agh.edu.pl/szymon/ PGP key id: RSA: 0x2ABE016B, DSS: 0xF9289982 F
Free speech includes the right not to listen, if not interested -- Heinlein H
Michał Dwużnik
> In article <heq0hi$33g$5...@reader1.panix.com>,
> Keith F. Lynch <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>> R H Draney <dado...@spamcop.net> wrote:
>>> =?UTF-8?B?TWljaGHFgiBEd3XFvG5paw==?= filted:
>>>> Is there any linguist saying that Hungarian is a dialect of
>>>> e.g. German?
>>> There are so many linguists running around that you can probably
>>> find at least one saying just about any damn fool thing you can
>>> think of....r
>> I doubt you'll find one who will say that Hungarian is a dialect of
>> German. Unless perhaps you hired him as an expert witness in a trial,
>> and paid him plenty of money to say whatever would help your side of
>> the case.
>>
>> I hope that all linguists would agree that UTF-8 ought to be taken out
>> and shot. Who the hell is "?B?TWljaGHFgiBEd3XFvG5paw==?="? If TWlj,
>> as I'll call him or her for short, want to post in German or Hungarian
>> or Estonian, go for it, but don't post complete gibberish that looks
>> like two cats fought on a keyboard and the keyboard lost.
>
> Oh.
>
> I am sitting here in awestruck wonder at your phrasing.
>
> However, it's probably much less TWlj's fault than that of
> his/her/its/their ISP/newsreader/editor/etcaetera.
>
Michal
Michał Dwużnik
>>>
>> So, navy is not really needed to consider Hungarian a language, not a
>> dialect...
>
> (a native speaker of Finnish) whether he could understand
> *any*thing of Magyar, and he said basically not, though he could
> recognize a few forms when they were pointed out to him.
>
> Anybody want to comment on the mutual (un)intelligibility of
> Finnish and Estonian? I know we have native speakers of both on
> this group.
>
Estonian...
Michal
Michał Dwużnik
> On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 02:03:54 +0100, Micha? Dwu?nik
> <"michal[dot]dwuznik[at]cern[dot]ch"@think.a.bit.before.replying>
> wrote:
>
>> Quadibloc wrote:
>>> On Nov 25, 7:33 pm, "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>>>> David DeLaney <d...@vic.com> wrote:
>>>>> Bill Snyder <bsny...@airmail.net> wrote:
>>>>>> Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
>>>>>>> Shall we start another interminable "What is a language?" thread?
>>>>>> What, the usual "a dialect with an army" definition has become
>>>>>> inoperative?
>>>>> Army AND a navy.
>>>> Landlocked countries don't have their own lanugages?
>>> The difference between a dialect and a language is solely and
>>> exclusively a *linguistic* question, and, thus, it is determined by
>>> the degree of difference in the forms of speech - specifically, their
>>> mutual intelligibility.
>>>
>> Is there any linguist saying that Hungarian is a dialect of e.g. German?
>
> That would be a real stretch, since Hungarian is actually a
> dialect of Finnish and Estonian.
>
proposal to count it as German dialect (following Austro-Hungarian
times, when the navy _was_ there).
Michal
Szymon Sokół
> A friend of mine once had an online argument with an American engineer
> who quite earnestly proposed that the whole world should standardise to
> ASCII keyboards. People who needed characters not covered could always
> enter the other letters with key codes, after all. He could not see why
> this would be a problem.
>
> Personally, I'd have invited to him to remove the keys for, say, k and
> d to see how convenient it'd be for me, for example. Let alone people
> who need more than three non-ASCII letters.
Americans often tend to believe that the rest of the world should adopt
their ways, which are obviously the best. But if they didn't, James Nicoll
would lose such a precious subject to make fun of (I have just stumbled upon
http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/2153828.html and I am going to bookmark
it for future reference).
But yes, I personally think that Unicode would be the best thing since ASCII
was created, if not for some minor problems. For example there are "partial
Unicode" fonts - fonts that contain glyphs for some Unicode characters, but
not for all of them; if you display a multilingual text in such a font, you
may end up with parts being displayed correctly and other parts being
replaced by series of question marks or empty rectangles. I am sure most
people who happened to visit a Chinese or Japanese web page without having
the proper fonts installed noticed that.
Another problem is that while there is one Unicode, there are several
Unicode encodings, UTF-8 and UTF-16 being most commonly used. Unfortunately,
while UTF-8 is dominant on the Internet, MS Windows uses UTF-16 internally;
so does cellphone text messaging. This makes things interesting for people
who write network applications for Windows or any kind of software dealing
with cellphones.
Another problem is with look-alike characters, and it has certain security
implications since Internet authorities decided that Unicode may be used in
domain names.
Still, Unicode solves more problems than it creates; it is only that those
problems were painful to the unimportant 94% of the world, ie. to those for
whom English is not the native language.
Szymon Sokół
This also seems to be the case between Poles and Russians (with Ukrainians
being somewhere in the middle), or Poles and Czechs (with Slovaks in the
middle - Slovak language is intelligible to Czechs and almost intelligible
to Poles; Czech and Polish mutually - not so much).
William December Starr
Mike Ash <mi...@mikeash.com> said:
> Maybe you should consider getting a more modern newsreader instead
> of whining about non-ASCII text?
>
> I'm sure this will trigger some rant about how ASCII is how God
> intended for Man to communicate. Hell, I have no problem if you
> want to use some antiquated thing that thinks there are only 96
> printable characters, just have the sense to recognize that the
> problem is on *your* side.
Serious query: are there any of these "more modern" newsreaders out
there that run on Unix, have a non-graphical mode, and act like trn
at least with rehard to its tree-and-branching handling of articles?
-- wds
William December Starr
cryptoguy <treif...@gmail.com> said:
> Keith, the drawbacks of you antiquated SW/HW setup are embarrassing
> you. *No one* but you think you're in the right on this. Get with the
> times.
Um, er.
I don't know if I think it's the _right_ side, but it is the one I
wish (in vain) was winning. I use trn as my newsreader, same as
Keith, and I really wish it wasn't being obsoleted by the idea that
a character like " isn't enough, oh no, the universe also
desperately need quote marks that lean to the left or the right...
-- wds
Juho Julkunen
(wds...@panix.com) says...
And if them damn furriners so desperately want to interact online they
can just set up their own UnAmericanNet. If 94 characters were enough
for Jesus, they ought to be enough for everyone.
--
Juho Julkunen
William December Starr
R H Draney <dado...@spamcop.net> said:
> Mike Ash filted:
>
>> I'm going to have to ask for some evidence for this claim now.
>> To make this fair, here's evidence for my position:
>>
>> http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/langdial/node2.html
>>
>> That's a set of notes from a university linguistics course
>> describing the difference between a dialect and a language. If
>> it's not a linguistic question, then why would they teach it in a
>> linguistics course?
>
> Because in any linguistics course, there's bound to be at least
> one student who will insist on a hard-edged distinction?...r
And the university can't afford to keep all those ejector seats in its
lecture halls in working order.
-- wds (and it gets embarrassing when the professor pushes the wrong button)
Bill Snyder
Starr) wrote:
Other serious query: What do you mean by a "non-graphical mode?"
According to Wikpedia, there are versions of tin which support
utf-8. You might find this a decent starting point:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Usenet_newsreaders>
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank]
Dorothy J Heydt
Juho Julkunen <giao...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>In article <KtsK1...@kithrup.com>, Dorothy J Heydt
>(djh...@kithrup.com) says...
>> In article <MPG.257a71d85...@news.kolumbus.fi>,
>> Juho Julkunen <giao...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> >In article <Kts3r...@kithrup.com>, Dorothy J Heydt
>> >(djh...@kithrup.com) says...
>> >>
>> >> It was on this very thread, not so long ago, that I asked Juho
>> >> (a native speaker of Finnish) whether he could understand
>> >> *any*thing of Magyar, and he said basically not, though he could
>> >> recognize a few forms when they were pointed out to him.
>> >>
>> >> Anybody want to comment on the mutual (un)intelligibility of
>> >> Finnish and Estonian? I know we have native speakers of both on
>> >> this group.
>> >
>> >I had a couple of Estonian workmen installing windows yesterday. I
>> >could occasionally follow the thread of their conversation, if not
>> >details.
>>
>> Interesting. So what language did you communicate in? English? :)
>
>One of them spoke Finnish I could mostly comprehend, and he seemed to
>comprehend mine.
>
>When I was last in Tallinn, I spoke English. Partly because the locals
>are not terribly taken with Finns who expect everybody to understand
>Finnish, insult their wares (Halpaa!), get drunk and are generally
>obnoxious.
Oh, gosh. Like the Fenno-Ugric version of Americans.
cryptoguy
> On 28 Nov 2009 09:39:58 -0500, wdst...@panix.com (William December
>
> Starr) wrote:
> >In article <mike-3A72D2.21585927112...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> >Mike Ash <m...@mikeash.com> said:
>
> >> Maybe you should consider getting a more modern newsreader instead
> >> of whining about non-ASCII text?
>
> >> I'm sure this will trigger some rant about how ASCII is how God
> >> intended for Man to communicate. Hell, I have no problem if you
> >> want to use some antiquated thing that thinks there are only 96
> >> printable characters, just have the sense to recognize that the
> >> problem is on *your* side.
>
> >Serious query: are there any of these "more modern" newsreaders out
> >there that run on Unix, have a non-graphical mode, and act like trn
> >at least with rehard to its tree-and-branching handling of articles?
>
> Other serious query: What do you mean by a "non-graphical mode?"
Serious answer: Which will run on a non-bitmapped screen. Prior to
1982/3 when the Lisa and MAC came out, the vast majority of computers
used non-graphical 'dumb' terminals, connected by serial lines to
(often time shared) computers, typically with an 80 column by 24
screen. For most applications, they died pretty rapidly as personal
computers gained the power to handle a bitmapped screen, which was
infinitely more flexible than the older format. In Linux, you'd want
to find a version that can run entirely in a shell window, in Windows,
in a DOS Prompt window.
Keith still uses a dumb terminal; I believe a VT420, one of the last
popular models, introduced in 1990, and EOL'd by 1995 at the latest.
The VT240 supports DEC Multinational Character Set, ISO Latin-1
and a number of national character sets. The list may be found at:
http://vt100.net/docs/vt420-uu/chapter9.html.
His reluctance to update his SW may be partially due to his HW being
unable to support UTF-8. He'd have to buy a new system.
As for standards, may I point to the 1998 RFC 2277, IETF Policy on
Character Sets and Languages:
- start quote -
3.1. What charset to use
All protocols MUST identify, for all character data, which charset
is
in use.
Protocols MUST be able to use the UTF-8 charset, which consists of
the ISO 10646 coded character set combined with the UTF-8 character
encoding scheme, as defined in [10646] Annex R (published in
Amendment 2), for all text.
- end quote -
So, sending NNTP and NNRP protocol using properly tagged UTF-8 is in
perfect compliance with the RFCs. If your reader can't display it, it
is you who are out of compliance, not the sender.
If Keith wants to continue to use his VT, he ought to patch his
newsreading SW so that it 'dumbs down' accented characters to the most
similar US-ASCII equivalents. In this case, the name that started off
this discussion would come out as 'Michal Dwuznik', dropping the
accents on the 'l' and the 'z'.
This would make an interesting Open Source project, which he could
feed back into the community, and add to his resume.
pt
Hatunen
Heydt) wrote:
>In article <g8g0h5h2ea1p951ec...@4ax.com>,
>Hatunen <hat...@cox.net> wrote:
>>On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 02:03:54 +0100, Micha? Dwu?nik
>><"michal[dot]dwuznik[at]cern[dot]ch"@think.a.bit.before.replying>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>Quadibloc wrote:
>>>> On Nov 25, 7:33 pm, "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>>>>> David DeLaney <d...@vic.com> wrote:
>>>>>> Bill Snyder <bsny...@airmail.net> wrote:
>>>>>>> Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>>>> Shall we start another interminable "What is a language?" thread?
>>>>>>> What, the usual "a dialect with an army" definition has become
>>>>>>> inoperative?
>>>>>> Army AND a navy.
>>>>> Landlocked countries don't have their own lanugages?
>>>>
>>>> The difference between a dialect and a language is solely and
>>>> exclusively a *linguistic* question, and, thus, it is determined by
>>>> the degree of difference in the forms of speech - specifically, their
>>>> mutual intelligibility.
>>>>
>>>Is there any linguist saying that Hungarian is a dialect of e.g. German?
>>
>>That would be a real stretch, since Hungarian is actually a
>>dialect of Finnish and Estonian.
>
>Let's say "relative." We've just recently had a statement from a
>Finn that he couldn't understand Hungarian nohow, though there
>were some words that looked familiar once they were pointed out
>to him.
Woosh.
--
************* DAVE HATUNEN (hat...@cox.net) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *
Hatunen
<"michal[dot]dwuznik[at]cern[dot]ch"@think.a.bit.before.replying>
wrote:
>proposal to count it as German dialect (following Austro-Hungarian
>times, when the navy _was_ there).
Sadly, the Hungarians once had a navy, or at least shared one
with Austria, but no more.
Hatunen
Hm. I wonder. The Estonians seem to have mastered English quite
nicely, as have the vast majority of Finns who are under the age
of fifty or so. I wonder if the visiting Finns try to speak
Estonian, or do the Estonians speak Finn? Of course, if they have
a problem communicating they can switch to English.
Finns have visited Estonia on booze runs now that Estonia is in
the EU as there are no customs duties. Or at worst, a quantity
limit. Not unlike here in southern Arizona, where we make any
visit to Mexico for any reason also a booze run. The quantity
limit is a nuisance though, as the limit is one quart per adult.
At the border, though, it's de facto one liter per adult. And if
you're driving back and you're respectable-looking old farts like
my wife and me, they don't even check. From the way EU residents
pass through customs in Helsinki, I reckon it's teh same for
Estonian booze.
Finnish liqour is controlled by Alki, the national alcohol
agency. In the past, like many of the Nordic countries, liquor
prices were pretty high, but not in Estonia. So, as you get off
the ferry in Tallinn and walk to the Old Town, one of the first
places you pass is a liquor store.
Hatunen
wrote:
>Mike Ash filted:
>>
>>I'm going to have to ask for some evidence for this claim now. To make
>>this fair, here's evidence for my position:
>>
>>http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/langdial/node2.html
>>
>>That's a set of notes from a university linguistics course describing
>>the difference between a dialect and a language. If it's not a
>>linguistic question, then why would they teach it in a linguistics
>>course?
>
>Because in any linguistics course, there's bound to be at least one student who
>will insist on a hard-edged distinction?...r
In his book, The Power of Babel, John McWhorter makes the claim
that there are no such things as languages, only dialects.
cryptoguy
> On 28 Nov 2009 06:50:16 GMT, "Brian M. Scott"
>
> >On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:20:11 -0700, Hatunen <hatu...@cox.net> wrote in
> >fcg0h5ltr0lcen0mdo0cdq5go3d0165...@4ax.com:
>
> >[...]
>
> >> Juho can probably put it more aptly, but I get teh impression
> >> Finn:Estonia :: Spanish:Portuguese.
>
> >This is the impression that I've got from comments in linguistic
> >literature, and further that in general Estonians and Portuguese
> >understand Finnish and Spanish, respectively, more easily than
> >Finns and Spaniards understand Estonian and Portuguese: Estonian
> >and Portuguese have undergone more extensive sound changes.
>
> Hm. I wonder. The Estonians seem to have mastered English quite
> nicely, as have the vast majority of Finns who are under the age
> of fifty or so. I wonder if the visiting Finns try to speak
> Estonian, or do the Estonians speak Finn? Of course, if they have
> a problem communicating they can switch to English.
>
> Finns have visited Estonia on booze runs now that Estonia is in
> the EU as there are no customs duties.
During Soviet times, they'd drink in Estonia. When I visited in 1985,
I rode the "Georg Ots" from Helsinki to Tallinn. I think I counted at
least 6 different bars on board. There were plenty more at the tourist
hotels, which were off-limits to Estonians. Apparently, it was quite
common for Finns to go for 'booze weekends' in Estonia.
pt
R H Draney
>
>And if them damn furriners so desperately want to interact online they
>can just set up their own UnAmericanNet. If 94 characters were enough
>for Jesus, they ought to be enough for everyone.
You don't need all 94, either...when I was learning to type, you used lowercase
L for the number one, and an exclamation point was "shift-eight, backspace,
period"...(shift-eight being the home of the apostrophe in those days)....r
--
A pessimist sees the glass as half empty.
An optometrist asks whether you see the glass
more full like this?...or like this?
R H Draney
>
>On Sat, 28 Nov 2009 11:34:20 +0100, Micha? Dwu?nik
><"michal[dot]dwuznik[at]cern[dot]ch"@think.a.bit.before.replying>
>wrote:
>
>>The absurd comes form "and a navy" part of the post, not from mine
>>proposal to count it as German dialect (following Austro-Hungarian
>>times, when the navy _was_ there).
>
>Sadly, the Hungarians once had a navy, or at least shared one
>with Austria, but no more.
And the Tonto National Forest is at 2324 East McDowell Road in Phoenix....r
Hatunen
wrote:
>Hatunen filted:
>>
>>On Sat, 28 Nov 2009 11:34:20 +0100, Micha? Dwu?nik
>><"michal[dot]dwuznik[at]cern[dot]ch"@think.a.bit.before.replying>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>The absurd comes form "and a navy" part of the post, not from mine
>>>proposal to count it as German dialect (following Austro-Hungarian
>>>times, when the navy _was_ there).
>>
>>Sadly, the Hungarians once had a navy, or at least shared one
>>with Austria, but no more.
>
>And the Tonto National Forest is at 2324 East McDowell Road in Phoenix....r
I didn't know Tonto had a forest.
Keith F. Lynch
> used lowercase L for the number one, and an exclamation point was
> "shift-eight, backspace, period"...(shift-eight being the home of
> the apostrophe in those days)....r
WHEN I WAS LEARNING MORSE CODE COMMA YOU ONLY NEEDED ONE KEY STOP
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
Dorothy J Heydt
Hatunen <hat...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>Finns have visited Estonia on booze runs now that Estonia is in
>the EU as there are no customs duties. Or at worst, a quantity
>limit. Not unlike here in southern Arizona, where we make any
>visit to Mexico for any reason also a booze run. The quantity
>limit is a nuisance though, as the limit is one quart per adult.
>At the border, though, it's de facto one liter per adult. And if
>you're driving back and you're respectable-looking old farts like
>my wife and me, they don't even check. From the way EU residents
>pass through customs in Helsinki, I reckon it's teh same for
>Estonian booze.
They call it profiling.... When I flew from the US to Scotland
back in the eighties, I dragged my bag and my weary body through
Customs and saw all the staff busy taking a teenager's backpack
apart. They were opening up a tube of lipstick to make sure
there was nothing but lipstick in it. When I walked in, they
gave me this weary, disgusted look and waved me on. I didn't
LOOK like a drug smuggler.
>
>Finnish liqour is controlled by Alki, the national alcohol
>agency. In the past, like many of the Nordic countries, liquor
>prices were pretty high, but not in Estonia. So, as you get off
>the ferry in Tallinn and walk to the Old Town, one of the first
>places you pass is a liquor store.
Whereas when you get off the airplane in any city in Nevada, you
run the gantlet of a hundred slot machines before you reach the
baggage check.
Keith F. Lynch
> I don't know if I think it's the _right_ side, but it is the one I
> wish (in vain) was winning. I use trn as my newsreader, same as
> Keith, and I really wish it wasn't being obsoleted by the idea
> that a character like " isn't enough, oh no, the universe also
> desperately need quote marks that lean to the left or the right...
Indeed. The problem isn't so much accented characters, which the
eight-bit ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) extension of ASCII can handle just
fine, it's Microsoft's proprietary so-called "smart quotes," "smart
hyphens," et cetera. Those aren't part of any standard, at least not
any standard not made up by Microsoft. So to non-Microsoft users,
these character may appear as question marks, upside down question
marks, backslashes followed by octal digits, equal signs followed by
hexadecimal digits, or, most likely, as nothing at all. The latter
makes writing look illiterate, as if the writer just didn't bother
to use apostrophes, quotes, or hyphens at all.
And sometimes a single Windows-turd gets expanded into numerous
gibberish characters, such as "car" in quotes turning into
"\342\200\234car\342\200\235."
I will continue to mostly ignore such gibberish, but occasionally,
when it gets really obnoxious, call attention to it. If I point out
enough times that the emperor is naked, maybe he'll switch to a more
honest tailor.
I don't believe our side is losing. The trn newsreader is still in
widespread use, as it has numerous important features that newer
newsreaders still lack. After more than a decade, the new standard
has obviously failed to take hold, as proven by the wide variance in
how non-Latin-1 text appears when quoted. Different newsreaders are
mangling it in very different ways. Clearly, most people are seeing
gibberish, but are remaining quiet so as not to be denounced for
being non-compliant.
Keith F. Lynch
> But yes, I personally think that Unicode would be the best thing
> since ASCII was created, if not for some minor problems. For
> example there are "partial Unicode" fonts - fonts that contain
> glyphs for some Unicode characters, but not for all of them; if you
> display a multilingual text in such a font, you may end up with
> parts being displayed correctly and other parts being replaced by
> series of question marks or empty rectangles. I am sure most people
> who happened to visit a Chinese or Japanese web page without having
> the proper fonts installed noticed that.
If someone can't read Chinese or Japanese, what difference does it
make if they're displayed incorrectly?
> Another problem is that while there is one Unicode, there are several
> Unicode encodings, UTF-8 and UTF-16 being most commonly used.
ISO-8859-1 extends ASCII to include accented letters. There are other
eight-bit character sets for other alphabets. Unicode is useful for
someone who wants to read a mixture, on the same page, of Arabic,
Japanese, Hebrew, Korean, Greek, and Russian. I don't think the other
99.99% of us should have to put up with an ecoding that doubles or
triples the sizes of all emails, newsgroup postings, blog entries, and
web pages, breaks nearly all existing software, and makes new software
much harder to write, for the convenience of that 0.01%.
> Another problem is with look-alike characters, and it has certain
> security implications since Internet authorities decided that
> Unicode may be used in domain names.
Indeed. Sometimes eBay.com isn't eBay.com, since one or more of the
letters may be in some random alphabet.
Keith F. Lynch
> Mike Ash (mi...@mikeash.com) says...
>> I'm sure this will trigger some rant about how ASCII is how God
>> intended for Man to communicate. Hell, I have no problem if you
>> want to use some antiquated thing that thinks there are only 96
>> printable characters, just have the sense to recognize that the
>> problem is on *your* side.
> A friend of mine once had an online argument with an American
> engineer who quite earnestly proposed that the whole world should
> standardise to ASCII keyboards. People who needed characters not
> covered could always enter the other letters with key codes, after
> all. He could not see why this would be a problem.
You guys are making really good points. Your victim is smashed to
pieces, and there's mangled straw all over the place.
Nobody in this newsgroup has said that ASCII is how God intended for
Man to communicate, or that the whole world should standardize to
ASCII keyboards. I can and do use accented letters where appropriate.
My objection is to things such as "\342\200\234" in place of a quote
mark, "=EF=BF=BD" in place of a space, or "?B?TWljaGHFgiBEd3XFvG5paw==?="
in place of a name. Or the same name being mangled in a dozen different
ways in less than a week.
R H Draney
>
>I didn't know Tonto had a forest.
Get out much?
http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/tonto/home.shtml
Stewart Robert Hinsley
<k...@KeithLynch.net> writes
>Indeed. The problem isn't so much accented characters, which the
>eight-bit ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) extension of ASCII can handle just fine,
ISO-8859-1 only handles some accented characters. It doesn't handle the
repertoires of Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Estonian, Latvian,
Lithuanian and Turkish, inter alia
>it's Microsoft's proprietary so-called "smart quotes," "smart hyphens,"
>et cetera. Those aren't part of any standard, at least not any
>standard not made up by Microsoft. So to non-Microsoft users, these
>character may appear as question marks, upside down question marks,
>backslashes followed by octal digits, equal signs followed by
>hexadecimal digits, or, most likely, as nothing at all. The latter
>makes writing look illiterate, as if the writer just didn't bother to
>use apostrophes, quotes, or hyphens at all.
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley
Bill Snyder
But William != not Keith, and I assume neither one actually
believes that changing your newsreader will make your VT100 (last
one I remember seeing; did they *really* carry on all the way to
240?) display glyphs outside its repertoire.
Mac
>
> Finnish liqour is controlled by Alki, the national alcohol
> agency
Clear proof of early Finnish settlement in the Pacific Nortwest.
Here we have lots of people who will begin controlling liquor alki.
Anthony "Boston Man" McCafferty
Bill Snyder
If we let you communicate, then the terrorists win.
David Scheidt
:Szymon Sok\303\263\305 <szy...@bastard.operator.from.hell.pl> wrote:
:> But yes, I personally think that Unicode would be the best thing
:> since ASCII was created, if not for some minor problems. For
:> example there are "partial Unicode" fonts - fonts that contain
:> glyphs for some Unicode characters, but not for all of them; if you
:> display a multilingual text in such a font, you may end up with
:> parts being displayed correctly and other parts being replaced by
:> series of question marks or empty rectangles. I am sure most people
:> who happened to visit a Chinese or Japanese web page without having
:> the proper fonts installed noticed that.
:If someone can't read Chinese or Japanese, what difference does it
:make if they're displayed incorrectly?
I've long wondered if you were really as stupid as you pretend to be.
I'm pretty sure I've made up my mind.
--
Movable type was evidently a fad. --Amanda Walker
Keith F. Lynch
> But William != not Keith, and I assume neither one actually believes
> that changing your newsreader will make your VT100 (last one I
> remember seeing; did they *really* carry on all the way to 240?)
> display glyphs outside its repertoire.
I am using a DEC VT420 terminal, not 240. I believe the highest-
numbered DEC terminal was the VT525. I also believe the only reason
DEC isn't still making terminals is that DEC no longer exists.
There are Wikipedia articles on these terminals.
I can create new fonts for it. I could even get it to correctly
render Japanese, if I had any reason to. But if the same name is
rendered a dozen different ways, the problem clearly isn't at *my*
end. I'm not about to back out a dozen different kinds of damage.
Even if I did, a thirteenth would appear, and a fourteenth. I might
as well waste my time trying to outsmart Cantor's diagonal argument.
Speaking of undoing damage, I believe I'm the only poster who undoes
Google's address manglement. I always replace the dots in the quoted
address with what's supposed to be there. (No, that doesn't reveal
the address to spammers, as that address had *already* appeared in
the newsgroup.)
Keith F. Lynch
I notice you have no counterargument.
I challenge you to IQ tests at 20 paces.
Walter Bushell
Szymon Sok—ł <szy...@bastard.operator.from.hell.pl> wrote:
> Americans often tend to believe that the rest of the world should adopt
> their ways, which are obviously the best.
So did the Brits in their day and the Romans in theirs. Mostly every
Empire did, if they had a possibility of enforcing it.
--
A computer without Microsoft is like a chocolate cake without mustard.
Szymon Sokół
> If Keith wants to continue to use his VT, he ought to patch his
> newsreading SW so that it 'dumbs down' accented characters to the most
> similar US-ASCII equivalents. In this case, the name that started off
> this discussion would come out as 'Michal Dwuznik', dropping the
> accents on the 'l' and the 'z'.
...or simply render all non-ASCII characters as question marks, as tin does
when it knows your terminal can't handle Unicode. Then "Michał Dwużnik"
becomes "Micha? Dwu?nik" and "Szymon Sokół" becomes "Szymon Sok??", which is
not very readable, but better than =?UTF-8?B?TWljaGHFgiBEd3XFvG5paw==?=
And yes, I recommend tin to those who want a newsreader that works under
Unix/Linux on a dumb terminal. This is how I have been reading Usenet for
over ten years. However, people who are accustomed to trn or slrn may find
tin not quite to their liking.
--
Szymon Sokół (SS316-RIPE) -- Network Manager B
Computer Center, AGH - University of Science and Technology, Cracow, Poland O
http://home.agh.edu.pl/szymon/ PGP key id: RSA: 0x2ABE016B, DSS: 0xF9289982 F
Free speech includes the right not to listen, if not interested -- Heinlein H
Michał Dwużnik
> In article <erwqxuzl4058$.d...@falcon.sloth.hell.pl>,
> Szymon Sok—ł <szy...@bastard.operator.from.hell.pl> wrote:
>
>> Americans often tend to believe that the rest of the world should adopt
>> their ways, which are obviously the best.
>
> So did the Brits in their day and the Romans in theirs. Mostly every
> Empire did, if they had a possibility of enforcing it.
>
Michał
Michał Dwużnik
>
> If Keith wants to continue to use his VT, he ought to patch his
> newsreading SW so that it 'dumbs down' accented characters to the most
> similar US-ASCII equivalents. In this case, the name that started off
> this discussion would come out as 'Michal Dwuznik', dropping the
> accents on the 'l' and the 'z'.
>
> This would make an interesting Open Source project, which he could
> feed back into the community, and add to his resume.
>
quite some part of Europe :>
Michal
Dorothy J Heydt
Szymon Sokó� <szy...@bastard.operator.from.hell.pl> wrote:
>On Sat, 28 Nov 2009 09:07:53 -0800 (PST), cryptoguy wrote:
>
>> If Keith wants to continue to use his VT, he ought to patch his
>> newsreading SW so that it 'dumbs down' accented characters to the most
>> similar US-ASCII equivalents. In this case, the name that started off
>> this discussion would come out as 'Michal Dwuznik', dropping the
>> accents on the 'l' and the 'z'.
>
>...or simply render all non-ASCII characters as question marks, as tin does
>when it knows your terminal can't handle Unicode. Then "Michał Dwużnik"
>becomes "Micha? Dwu?nik" and "Szymon Sokół" becomes "Szymon Sok??", which is
>not very readable, but better than =?UTF-8?B?TWljaGHFgiBEd3XFvG5paw==?=
>
>And yes, I recommend tin to those who want a newsreader that works under
>Unix/Linux on a dumb terminal. This is how I have been reading Usenet for
>over ten years. However, people who are accustomed to trn or slrn may find
>tin not quite to their liking.
The thing I like about trn is the threading. (I've never tried
tin, and it doesn't seem to exist on the kithrup server. (No man
entry, either.) But it's so much simpler to select the few
threads I do want to read, rather than trying to killfile
everything I don't.
Michał Dwużnik
> In message <hert97$88a$1...@reader1.panix.com>, Keith F. Lynch
> <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes
>> Indeed. The problem isn't so much accented characters, which the
>> eight-bit ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) extension of ASCII can handle just fine,
>
> ISO-8859-1 only handles some accented characters. It doesn't handle the
> repertoires of Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Estonian, Latvian,
> Lithuanian and Turkish, inter alia
>
when the difference between offering a favour and offering active oral
sex is one innocent added line...
Michal
PS:As for "winning" side. Is the amount of people using dumb terminals
growing?
Michał Dwużnik
> On Sat, 28 Nov 2009 11:34:20 +0100, Micha? Dwu?nik
> <"michal[dot]dwuznik[at]cern[dot]ch"@think.a.bit.before.replying>
> wrote:
>
>> The absurd comes form "and a navy" part of the post, not from mine
>> proposal to count it as German dialect (following Austro-Hungarian
>> times, when the navy _was_ there).
>
> Sadly, the Hungarians once had a navy, or at least shared one
> with Austria, but no more.
>
navy still does not constitute Hungarian being a language :>
Michal
cryptoguy
> Szymon Sok\303\263\305 <szy...@bastard.operator.from.hell.pl> wrote:
> > But yes, I personally think that Unicode would be the best thing
> > since ASCII was created, if not for some minor problems. For
> > example there are "partial Unicode" fonts - fonts that contain
> > glyphs for some Unicode characters, but not for all of them; if you
> > display a multilingual text in such a font, you may end up with
> > parts being displayed correctly and other parts being replaced by
> > series of question marks or empty rectangles. I am sure most people
> > who happened to visit a Chinese or Japanese web page without having
> > the proper fonts installed noticed that.
>
> If someone can't read Chinese or Japanese, what difference does it
> make if they're displayed incorrectly?
>
> > Another problem is that while there is one Unicode, there are several
> > Unicode encodings, UTF-8 and UTF-16 being most commonly used.
>
> ISO-8859-1 extends ASCII to include accented letters. There are other
> eight-bit character sets for other alphabets.
ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) handles some western European accented
characters. Is doesn't handle Polish (that's Latin-2), so it couldn't
render Michal's name correctly. Nor will it handle Estonian correctly
(Latin-4). UTF-8 will handle them all, and more. Its the current
Internet standard, mandated by the IETF. Deal with it.
pt
William December Starr
Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> said:
> Szymon Sok—ł <szy...@bastard.operator.from.hell.pl> wrote:
>
>> Americans often tend to believe that the rest of the world should
>> adopt their ways, which are obviously the best.
>
> So did the Brits in their day and the Romans in theirs. Mostly
> every Empire did, if they had a possibility of enforcing it.
Serious question: in those empires, and the various others, did the
"Yay us, beat Them!" contingent have as strong an attachment to the
idea "All those people out there want to be just like us (even if
some of them are too backwards to know it yet)" that some elements
of the American Empire have? (I'm betting the answer is yes, but I
really don't know.)
-- wds
William December Starr
Bill Snyder <bsn...@airmail.net> said:
> But William != not Keith, and I assume neither one actually
> believes that changing your newsreader will make your VT100 (last
> one I remember seeing; did they *really* carry on all the way to
> 240?) display glyphs outside its repertoire.
I currently interact with Usenet via a dialup account (stop
laughing) with Panix that gets me a Unix shell. I use a DOS-running
PC, and running ProComm Plus (for DOS) version 2.01. This emulates
a VT101 terminal (or possibly a VT102; I can never remember which
and the difference is pretty trivial anyway) -- your basic 24 lines,
80 characters wide -- on a monochrome CRT.
I do all this mostly because that's the way that I always have.
Now, I also have a real PC (as real as one that runs on Windows
Vista can be, anyway) that I use for pretty much all of my
interaction with the universe that isn't email or Usenet and one of
the apps running on _it_ is SecureCRT, which I also use to connect
with my Panix shell account. If I ever get around to customizing
SecureCRT so that it runs all the useful keystroke mapping and
macros that I've set up in ProComm over the millennia, I may switch
completely over to that.
All that said though, I _like_ the way trn handles article threading
and I really don't want to give that up.
-- wds
Bill Snyder
<k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>Bill Snyder <bsn...@airmail.net> wrote:
>> But William != not Keith, and I assume neither one actually believes
>> that changing your newsreader will make your VT100 (last one I
>> remember seeing; did they *really* carry on all the way to 240?)
>> display glyphs outside its repertoire.
>
>I am using a DEC VT420 terminal, not 240. I believe the highest-
>numbered DEC terminal was the VT525. I also believe the only reason
>DEC isn't still making terminals is that DEC no longer exists.
And the fact that they don't because they haven't existed for more
than a decade is, of course, indicative of nothing. VAX still
RULEZ. (Hm, should we also be using the DEC alphabet?)
Bill Snyder
DeLaney) wrote:
>Mike Ash <mi...@mikeash.com> wrote:
>>Hell, I have no problem if you want to use some
>>antiquated thing that thinks there are only 96 printable characters,
>>just have the sense to recognize that the problem is on *your* side.
>
>Mmm-hm. Let's all start posting to Mike in EBCDIC and see how he likes it.
Do you really want to force me to write you in Baudot?
Bill Snyder
<"michal[dot]dwuznik[at]cern[dot]ch"@think.a.bit.before.replying>
wrote:
>Stewart Robert Hinsley wrote:
What's all this I hear about dumb people using terminals? . . .
Dorothy J Heydt
Micha� Dwużnik <"michal[dot]dwuznik[at]cern[dot]ch"@think.a.bit.before.replying> wrote:
>Stewart Robert Hinsley wrote:
>> In message <hert97$88a$1...@reader1.panix.com>, Keith F. Lynch
>> <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes
>>> Indeed. The problem isn't so much accented characters, which the
>>> eight-bit ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) extension of ASCII can handle just fine,
>>
>> ISO-8859-1 only handles some accented characters. It doesn't handle the
>> repertoires of Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Estonian, Latvian,
>> Lithuanian and Turkish, inter alia
>>
>Well, we do really like our diacritics... It happens to help, especially
>when the difference between offering a favour and offering active oral
>sex is one innocent added line...
Heh. You remind me of the language called _casta_ (supposedly a
hybrid of Spanish and Gaelic, pass the grain of salt) in MZB's
Darkover stories, in which a poorly-trained diplomat could attempt
to say "all men are brothers" and have it come out "you are a
pack of boy-lovers," just through getting the wrong inflection.
Dorothy J Heydt
Listen, let's count our blessings. We used to run a registration
system using a low-end Sun clone, and our reg clerks spoke to it
through a bunch of ADM3As. Presently the computer died, Jim, it
never uttered again -- Hal still has its hard drive in a closet
somewhere -- but he insisted on keeping the dumb terminals around
for at least fifteen years. Eventually I was able to persuade
him to dump them.
(We now run reg on a Linux box and the reg clerks talk to it
through assorted PCs.)
Michał Dwużnik
>>>
>> Well, we do really like our diacritics... It happens to help, especially
>> when the difference between offering a favour and offering active oral
>> sex is one innocent added line...
>
> Heh. You remind me of the language called _casta_ (supposedly a
> hybrid of Spanish and Gaelic, pass the grain of salt) in MZB's
> Darkover stories, in which a poorly-trained diplomat could attempt
> to say "all men are brothers" and have it come out "you are a
> pack of boy-lovers," just through getting the wrong inflection.
>
different tone may change the meaning of 'hang' into 'answer', 'big' or
'hit' and so on. The difference appearing tiny to one may be fairly
crucial to others...
Michal
Charles Wm. Dimmick
I had a professor once whose father was a Hungarian member of the
Parliament of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They were forbidden to speak
Hungarian, but some of them refused to speak German [or the Australian
equivalent thereof], and so spoke Latin instead [or at least that's what
I was told; I've never documented it].
Cahrles
Michał Dwużnik
>>>
>> Which is what I said above in principle. Though common
>> Austro-Hungarian navy still does not constitute Hungarian being a
>> language :>
>
> I had a professor once whose father was a Hungarian member of the
> Parliament of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They were forbidden to speak
> Hungarian, but some of them refused to speak German [or the Australian
> equivalent thereof], and so spoke Latin instead [or at least that's what
> I was told; I've never documented it].
>
remind that the Austro-Hungarian garrison in Krakow in 1918 happened to
consist at least Hungarians, Austrians, Czechs and Polish soldiers, and
as far as I know there was no ban on using their own languages, though
the knowledge of German was obligatory (at least on drill sergeant
vocabulary level). The key trick played by Polish commander of the
garrison when declaring independence was pretending to have some
important news. So important that the message had to be presented for
each nation in their own language after having split the soldiers into
"national" groups.
Isolated group of German native speakers surrendered with no shots fired
after being presented with "I declare the independence of..." message...
The trick played was successful thanks to the ability of the commander
to speak more than one language as well as due to the possibility to use
different ones in one military formation.
Michal
Bill Snyder
Starr) wrote:
>In article <47f92a93-cab0-472d...@j14g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
>cryptoguy <treif...@gmail.com> said:
>
>> Keith, the drawbacks of you antiquated SW/HW setup are embarrassing
>> you. *No one* but you think you're in the right on this. Get with the
>> times.
>
>Um, er.
>
>I don't know if I think it's the _right_ side, but it is the one I
>wish (in vain) was winning. I use trn as my newsreader, same as
>Keith, and I really wish it wasn't being obsoleted by the idea that
>a character like " isn't enough, oh no, the universe also
>desperately need quote marks that lean to the left or the right...
Those wacko, unnecessary slanted quotes that books were using long
before such as Usenet was even dreamt of, you mean?
Bill Snyder
P.S. And how 'bout those nasty italics, while we're at it?
William December Starr
"Charles Wm. Dimmick" <cdim...@snet.net> said:
> I had a professor once whose father was a Hungarian member of the
> Parliament of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They were forbidden to
> speak Hungarian, but some of them refused to speak German [or the
> Australian equivalent thereof], and so spoke Latin instead [or at
> least that's what I was told; I've never documented it].
Leading to the question "So what _does_ Pig Latin sound like in
Hungarian, anyway?"
-- wds