An assessment of the Unicode standard

[Anny Mous]

r wrote:

> Of the many
> things that divide us such as race, color, religion, geography, blah,
> the most perplexing and devastating seems to be why have we not
> accepted a single global language for all to speak.

I agree 1000% and obviously we should make Klingon that global language. Or
possibly the Black Tongue of the Mordor Orcs, which is much better for
cursing. I haven't decided yet.


> Take for instance the Chinese language with it's thousands of
> characters and BS, it's more of an art than a language.  Why do we
> need such complicated languages in this day and time. Many languages
> have been perfected, (although not perfect) far beyond that of Chinese
> language. The A-Z char set is flawless!

How do we distinguish resume from résumé without accents?

Even when we succeed in banning all languages that can't be written using
A-Z, what do we do about the vast number of legacy documents? How do we
write about obsolete English letters like Ð and Þ without Unicode?

How do we write mathematical and scientific documents without characters
like Δ → λ ∫ and ∞ ?

What do we use to replace typographic symbols and dingbats like † without
Unicode?


> Some may say well how can we possibly force countries/people to speak/
> code in a uniform manner? Well that's simple, you just stop supporting
> their cryptic languages by dumping Unicode and returning to the
> beautiful ASCII and adopting English as the universal world language.
> Why English? Well because it is so widely spoken.

World population: 6.7 billion

Number of native Mandarin speakers: 873 million
Number of native Hindi speakers: 370 million
Number of native Spanish speakers: 350 million
Number of native English speakers: 340 million

Total number of Mandarin speakers: 1051 million
Total number of English speakers: 510 million

http://www.vistawide.com/languages/top_30_languages.htm

Whichever way you look at it, we should all convert to Mandarin, not
English. Looks like we still need Unicode.

Besides, given that the US would be bankrupt if not for Chinese loans, do
you really want to upset them by suggesting their language sucks?


> But whatever we 
> choose just choose one language and stick with it, perfect it, and
> maintain it.

Just ask the Academie Francaise how well that works!

Why stop with A-Z? We can improve on 26 letters. In the first year we should
replace the soft 'c' with 's'. Any sivilized language will sertainly be
better off with this change. The hard 'c' will be dropped in favour of 'k',
which will klear up much konfusion and allow one key less on keyboards.

In the sekond year I expect publik enthusiasm to grow, allowing us to
replace the troublesome 'ph' with 'f', which will make words
like 'fotograf' twenty persent shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to
permit more komplikated changes. We will enkourage the removal of double
leters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil
agre that the horible mes of the silent 'e' is disgrasful.

By the fourth yer, peopl wil be reseptiv to replasing 'th' with 'z' and 'w'
with 'v'. Zis vil be a grat improvment.

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary 'o' kan be dropd from vords kontaining 'ou'
and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor
trubls or difikultis and everivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer.
ZE DREM VIL FINALI COM TRU!


> IMO Multiple languages are barriers to communication, collaboration,
> and the continuation of our future evolution as intelligent Human
> beings and this language multiplicity will comprise our future until
> it is reigned in and utterly destroyed. 

Yes, because language differences have utterly destroyed us so many times in
the past!

Have you thought about the difference between China, with one culture and
one spoken language for thousands of years, and Europe, with dozens of
competing cultures, competing governments, and alternate languages for just
as long? If multiple languages are so harmful, why was it the British,
French, Japanese, Russians, Germans, Italians, Austrians, Hungarians and
Americans who were occupying China during the Opium Wars and the Boxer
Rebellion, instead of the other way around?

Strength comes from diversity, not monoculture.