On Thu, Dec 24, 2020 at 6:49 AM marc <marcx2 at welz.org.za> wrote: > Note how the global telephone system has made it into the furthest > corners of the planet - arguably further than the internet, and did > so without worrying about internationalisation relating to their > URL equivalents (phone numbers)... > As someone who grew up actually rotating a dial to enter 7, 10, or (for international calls) 15 digits, and looking them up in a paper booklet when I hadn't memorized them, the user experience *sucked*. Rectangular dials are quicker, but otherwise not that much easier to use. You could get a name-to-number mapping by voice if you had enough details (typically a postal address), but that is increasingly useless except for reaching a business. So what we have now is a system where numbers are universal and the associated names are purely local. The insinuation was that internationalised URLs are essential > because people who don't speak english at all might not be > able to comprehend or (if their input system is sufficiently > different) generate ascii/latin text. > I think that is not the point at all. In general, anglophones don't want URLs that are completely meaningless: domain names generally have meaning and so do path names and file names (consider gemini:// gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/companion/robots.gmi, for example, which tells you a lot about the document it identifies). But if they are in the wrong script, ??? ?? ??? ?? ?? ??? ?? ?????????? ?? ???? ?? ?????????. In addition, ?? k?nv?n??nz ?v tr?nzl?t?re???n ?r n?t n?s?s?rili k?ns?st?nt bitwin pip?l or k?ntriz. > The desire to be inclusive is good, but we are deferential > to pretty recent concept/meme - the monolingual nation state, > which is say 200 or 300 years old. Nid yw pob gwlad yn defnyddio un iaith yn unig. (Not all countries use only one language). > In this regard having people know learn a new language to interact > with the internet isn't that much of an imposition, but a return > to the way things were... just scaled up to the size of the planet. > In imperio Romanorum, facilis est negotiator Romanus quam Gallus sive Germanus, because the Roman grew up knowing the language of trade. Likewise the anglophone today. Isn't that yet another hint ? That the point of a language is to > communicate, not to serve as a barrier, despite the machinations > of nationalists ? > 'M?lin eru h?fu?einkenni ?j??anna' ? Languages are the chief distinguishing > marks of peoples. No people in fact comes into being until it speaks a > language of its own; let the languages perish and the peoples perish too, > or become different peoples. But that never happens except as the result of > oppression and distress.' > These are the words of a little-known Icelander of the early nineteenth > century, Sj?ra Tomas S?mundsson, He had, of course, primarily in mind the > part played by the cultivated Icelandic language, in spite of poverty, lack > of power, and insignificant numbers, in keeping the Icelanders in being in > desperate times. But the words might as well apply to the Welsh of Wales, > who have also loved and cultivated their language for its own sake (not as > an aspirant for the ruinous honour of becoming the lingua franca of the > world), and who by it and with it maintain their identity. --J.R.R. Tolkien, who was the furthest thing possible from either a nationalist or an imperialist. This is less true in Wales than it was when Tolkien wrote it, but the point is the same. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/attachments/20201224/44ff 0be6/attachment-0001.htm>
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