Re: CHAT: Dutch & Cyrillic

In a message dated 4/12/02 12.51.04 AM, Jan (ijzeren_jan@YAHOO.CO.UK) quotes
yours truly and writes:

>> Sci-Fi idea: an alternative future in which a
>> Dutch-Nordic Alliance colonize space (what do you
>> expect from a SuperNation based on maritime power,
>> cultural pluralism, and progressive socio-political
>> ideology?)
>
>Great idea, indeed. I have always dreamt of being
>President of the Universe!!!
>But I somehow doubt it, since we are a SuperNation
>with a strong collective minority complex... Sigh!
>I'm afraid it will be America or China, after all.
    I did say "alternative future"... sort of based on the
nostalgia that some of my older Chinese-Indonesian relatives
are prone to express ("It was a better life under the Dutch
than now... The Dutch kept the Indonesians off us.")
    Also I like the Dutch and Nordic nations record for being
usually very progressive in modern times (strange that the descend-
ants of mercantile colonialists and Vikings/Norsemen could be so
different from their ancestors. Makes me whistfully hopeful for the whole
bleeding human race).

>> Just a bit ago IIRC there was much "Slavic/Cyrillic
>> activity"... I found this interesting bit of text
>> deliberately underlined in the Berkeley class-notes
>> a female Russian friend gave me: "The advantage of
>> spelling in Cyrillic lies mainly in its greater
>> versatility, derived from the fact that its alphabet
>> has more letters than Latin, and that diacritical
>> marks are therefore required less than in Latin
>> transcriptions or transliterations"
>
>I'm afraid I disgree with your female Russian
>class-mate.
    Oh, she's not a classmate. I don't go to Berkeley :)

>Look at the following differences:
>
>- Latin script is used by much more languages than
> Cyrillic, and deals with them well.
<ZNiiP of very true facts on Cyrillic vs. Latin>

>Conclusion: only for a very specific kind of languages
>the Cyrillic script would be better.
    That is why I deliberately followed that quote with:
("People, Languages, and Migrations," from _Central Asia: 130 Years of
Russian Dominance, A Historical Overview_, 3rd edition, 1994)
    By citing the source material, I was hopefully putting it _within_ that
context.
And also pointing out my friend's Slavocentricism or Cyrillicentrism ;)

>But then, following the quotation, wouldn't it be
>better if we all started to use Armenian or Georgian
>script?
    Eek!
    Talking of Latin alphabets... one of my favourite re-designs of
it is done by the Bauhaus-influenced Herbert Bayer ("Basic Alfabet" also
known as "Bayer fonetik"). Herbert Bayer also designed "a new machine
alphabet" called "Universal Type."
    Another Latin alphabet re-design is Wim Crouwel's "neu alphabet."

>Jan

Hanuman Zhang
~
"When you lose a language, it's like dropping a bomb on a museum."
- Kenneth Hale
------------§------------
¡ ptoleme pan.xero i anatropi lexzi !  ¡ poie lexzi meta.amoebe !

<<fight linguistic extinction & entropy !  create mutant/mutating language(s)
!>>

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