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This is a very strange question. In English you get i. In Turkish or Azeri you get ı. There is a very fundamental difference between ı and i and basically no na

This is a very strange question. In English you get i. In Turkish or Azeri you get ı. There is a very fundamental difference between ı and i and basically no native speaker mixes them up. When you're learning English, for example, you mix up and write capital İ instead of I. The rule is basic: ı <--> I and i <--> İ. No magic going on.

jwilk 9y ago
> When you're learning English, for example, you mix up and write capital İ instead of I That's part of the aforementioned fun. Another part is bugs like this: https://bugs.debian.org/579324 https://bugs.debian.org/579324
- gnulinux 9y ago
  I mean, when you're learning a different language, isn't it normal to make mistakes? Why should other languages optimize for English learning?
M_Bakhtiari 9y ago
You don't always have the luxury of knowing the language of the text you're processing. You may well encounter both English and Turkish words in the same text stream, and you don't always have the means to distinguish between them. It's the same problem with Han unification. It's fine if you have 100% Japanese, Chinese or Korean and set your font accordingly. But it all breaks down when you try to mix two or more languages in the same stream, unless you have some external means of distinguishing between them.
- gnulinux 9y ago
  This might be true but Turkish alphabet was designed in late 1920s when computers barely existed. Maybe they could update it now? I find it hard to believe they would do it though. EDIT: I guess you could make a case about Kazakh alphabet not inheriting this feature. But having written systems for both Turkish and English I don't find this a huge deal. I guess this alphabet reform has mostly nationalistic motivation and Kazakhs might have wanted to fit their alphabet to similar languages like Turkish or Azeri for which the alphabet is tested and we know it works.

jwilk 9y ago

> When you're learning English, for example, you mix up and write capital İ instead of I That's part of the aforementioned fun. Another part is bugs like this: https://bugs.debian.org/579324 https://bugs.debian.org/579324

gnulinux 9y ago
I mean, when you're learning a different language, isn't it normal to make mistakes? Why should other languages optimize for English learning?

M_Bakhtiari 9y ago

You don't always have the luxury of knowing the language of the text you're processing. You may well encounter both English and Turkish words in the same text stream, and you don't always have the means to distinguish between them. It's the same problem with Han unification. It's fine if you have 100% Japanese, Chinese or Korean and set your font accordingly. But it all breaks down when you try to mix two or more languages in the same stream, unless you have some external means of distinguishing between them.

gnulinux 9y ago
This might be true but Turkish alphabet was designed in late 1920s when computers barely existed. Maybe they could update it now? I find it hard to believe they would do it though. EDIT: I guess you could make a case about Kazakh alphabet not inheriting this feature. But having written systems for both Turkish and English I don't find this a huge deal. I guess this alphabet reform has mostly nationalistic motivation and Kazakhs might have wanted to fit their alphabet to similar languages like Turkish or Azeri for which the alphabet is tested and we know it works.