🚀 go-pugleaf

	Becoming more and more popular are Automatic Teller Machines (ATM).
These clever gizmos allow you to stick a credit-card into a slot and get
cash 24 hours a day.  You walk through a few menus, enter an authentication
code and the machine spits money at you and debits your bank account.  Of
course, you can do other types of transactions as well.

	Here in New York, the first question the Citibank ATM's ask you is
"What language should we speak?"  In my neighborhood, the alternatives are
English and Espanol.  I would imagine other branches might have other
choices.

	Two observations.  First is the anthromorphism of a machine saying
"we speak".  Second is that it does just fine without national character
sets.  The "Espanol" version doesn't have any accents (or a tilde) and this
doesn't seem to cause any confusion.  I have no idea what the ATM's in
chinatown do.

	Granted, Spanish and English use character sets which are 95% the
same.  I would guess, however, that most European languages would do OK
without an extended character set.  I'm not saying it wouldn't be ugly, or
that it wouldn't look funny, or that this would be acceptable for business
letters.  I'm just saying that the meaning would be clear.  For an ATM,
that's probably good enough.
-- 
Roy Smith <allegra!phri!roy>
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016