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mohta@necom830.cc.titech.ac.jp (Masataka Ohta) writes:

> In article <75sqXB1w165w@blues.kk.sub.org>
>       kosta@blues.kk.sub.org (Kosta Kostis) writes:
> 
> >Greek, Latin and Cyrillic are three different *alphabets*.
> >
> >When I say "alphabets" I'm referring to a small number of characters with

Hm, I know this "definition" was very inaccurate...  :-(

> I can't understand why it must be "a small number". Anyway,

Well, the main idea (the way I see it) behind an alphabet is that you
have a small number of symbols (characters) to describe the words you
speak and hear so that it is easy and quick to learn. 

Take the following as a tale with some truth in it:
   
   In ancient Greece there was never a problem with orthography, because
   the people wrote exactly what they heared, but over the time the way
   the words were pronounced changed, so diacrytical marks were added
   to reflect the correct pronounciation. More marks were added and more
   "foreign" words made their way into the language. After thousands of
   years the script became so complicated that it was really hard to write
   correct Greek. The government decided to simplify the script and limited
   the script to the base alphabet with 24 characters ("alpha" to "omega"),
   the "final sigma" and one single diacrytical mark.

I told you it's not the whole story...  ;-)

> >an order that allow the "user" of such an alphabet to write text in their
> >language. At least some characters in the above mentioned alphabets look
> >different and have different meanings or can't be found in all alphabets.
> 
> German alphabet has a character "A with umlaut" which can't be found in
> French alphabet.

German alphabet? French alphabet? Don't mix scripts with alphabets.

> They are, by your definition, different alphabets.

Ie, the *Latin* alphabet goes from "a" to "z". The German "Umlaute"
are characters from the alphabet with diacrytical marks. When you
write an "ä" (a-umlaut) by hand, you write an "a" and make two dots
over them. Characters with diacrytical marks don't form a new alphabet,
they modify the way you pronounce words. The German "sharp s" is an
*extension* to the Latin alphabet.

> Why you unify German alphabet and French alphabet, then?

The term "German alphabet" is somehow misleading. I don't know what the
people in other European countries are taught at school, but the above
is what I learned at school in Germany quite a long time ago, and it
means that there is no "German alphabet" but a Latin alphabet.

> >Additionally the ease of conversion (from ISO 8859-x) is important, too.
> 
> Of course, the ease off conversion from ISO 2022 conformant text
> using all of GB, JIS and KCS is is also important.

I think so, too, but how can we do that with 16-bits?   =;^)        

Don't get me wrong, I simply don't know enough about Asian scripts.
The lesson I have learned so far is that I have to learn a lot more
about Asian scripts, cultures, languages, history and so on before
I can really think of judging this for myself.

	Kosta

-- 
  Kosta Kostis, Talstrasse 25, D-6074 Roedermark 3, Germany
  kosta@blues.kk.sub.org                                        (home)
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