Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 16:10:45 +0930 From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> Cc: David Schultz <dschultz@uclink.Berkeley.EDU>, Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@FreeBSD.ORG>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Language in danger: Language loss Message-ID: <20020529161045.U82424@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <20020529062638.GA8243@lpt.ens.fr> References: <20020527014353.B1951@HAL9000.wox.org> <20020528091410.G29491@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20020528001001.GA20175@hades.hell.gr> <20020528095208.A16567@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20020527175613.A1214@HAL9000.wox.org> <20020528102802.K16567@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20020527184817.A1485@HAL9000.wox.org> <20020528104311.A37937@lpt.ens.fr> <20020529123150.F82424@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20020529062638.GA8243@lpt.ens.fr>
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On Wednesday, 29 May 2002 at 8:26:39 +0200, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > Greg 'groggy' Lehey said on May 29, 2002 at 12:31:50: >>> In French it's normal to drop accents when it's inconvenient to write >>> them (and, often, in capital letters even when it is possible to write >>> them). >> >> Yes, French is different in that way. One of the reasons is that >> they're accents, not different letters, and there's little ambiguity >> if you leave them out. That's not the case in German: they are >> different letters, and changing the letters makes the words ambiguous. >> For example, "Rachen" means "throat" and "Rächen" (or "Raechen" if you >> don't have the characters) means "Avenge". > > Well, in French "à" means "at" and "a" means "(third person) has". > "Parle" (speak, present tense) is different from "parlé" (participle). > The slogan of the bus company in Grenoble, "Nous allons où vous allez" > means "we go where you go", but if you dropped the accent it would > mean "we go or you go". That doesn't stop people from dropping the > accent when on an inappropriate keyboard, or when writing in capitals > unless they badly want to avoid confusion (eg the Grenoble bus company > uses the accent even in capital letters). Fine. >>> It makes sense to me. "Godel" is the normal spelling in English. >> >> It's not an English word. > > He lived in America for the latter part of his life, and chose that > spelling (at least the evidence suggests so). Many people choose to > spell their names explicitly with "oe" when writing in languages other > than German (the drug company Hoechst does so consistently, even in > Germany, I think), but that really became common only in recent > decades. Well, in that case it's a red herring. "Hoechst" is spelt like that, and not "Höchst". Yes, that's not correct German spelling, but names don't have to adhere to spelling rules in any language I know--another difference from other words. >>> I agree, every language distorts foreign words and foreign names. >>> French is by far the worst offender I've seen (eg, "Jean-Sebastien >>> Bach," and I'm not even getting started on names from non-Roman >>> scripts like Indian languages). English by and large is not so bad; >>> it doesn't have accents "natively", so it's not terribly necessary to >>> use them, in my opinion; and unless you're a trained German writer, >>> the most obvious way out is to drop them altogether. >> >> It may be obvious, but that makes it neither correct nor desirable. > > You're suggesting that everyone who refers to a German name should > know the rules of German spelling, which is ridiculous in this > globalized day. Not at all. What I'm saying is that not knowing the spelling rules doesn't make your mistakes correct, though it may make them justifiable. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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