4 ms·

Agree with this, then you come across a more philosophical debate: should the very nature of written language change to adapt to the needs of technology, or the

Agree with this, then you come across a more philosophical debate: should the very nature of written language change to adapt to the needs of technology, or the other way around? On one hand, language has always been an amorphous thing and has changed throughout history. On the other could some changes change the very nature and heart of it? No one agrees on those trade-offs, and I argue likely never will.

Asooka 6y ago
> should the very nature of written language change to adapt to the needs of technology This has been always the case. I mean, think of how modern latin letter forms developed. Think back to the Roman Empire, when the letters were etched in stone or wax tablets, with only capitals (before the invention of minuscule), drawn with straight lines that are easy to chisel. Think of the later periods when many books were written by scribes using pen and ink, resulting in changes to letters so they could write entire words in one hand motion. Later still, we have the printing press and its demands that each letter be a discrete unit, doing away with the wavy flow of words. Today most people write using print letters simply because the majority of writing you would encounter is in print, so that's what's easiest to read. Those changes probably don't register to you as egregious as the one parent proposes, due to the fact that the person enforcing the change and the person developing the technology are one and the same - a native speaker modifying his own language to fit the tools at hand. Which I think brings us to a resolution - the native speakers of the language are the ones to decide how to change it to suit their everyday needs, including making it easier to produce and consume with the tools of the day.
- LikeAnElephant 6y ago
  > Which I think brings us to a resolution - the native speakers of the language are the ones to decide how to change it to suit their everyday needs, including making it easier to produce and consume with the tools of the day. Agree with you here, it's well outside my rights as an English speaking American to have an opinion of any merit. However I would still struggle to call handing it over to native speakers a resolution. Many native speakers have incredibly strong feelings on both sides of the argument; and often for very good and valid reasons. I'm glad the Unicode Consortium exists, because I am CERTAIN I don't want to be the decider or facilitator of these discussions. Way above my pay grade.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > Think back to the Roman Empire, when the letters were etched in stone or wax tablets, with only capitals (before the invention of minuscule), drawn with straight lines that are easy to chisel. To choose some random capital Roman letters, how about... SPQR? Those got inscribed all the time. Roman letters don't really show any bias towards straight lines. Don't confuse the fact that we split the Roman letter V into two letters U/V with the idea that they didn't carve curved letters. Check out this awesome plaque from the year 90: https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-a-bronze-inscription-a-remnant-of-roman-might/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-a-bronze-inscription-a-remn...
  - earthboundkid 6y ago
    Interestingly, it’s easier for me to read that bronze plaque from the first century than a typical manuscript from the fifteenth century, in part because in the early modern period, there was a purposeful revival of the Roman inscription style for writing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_square_capitals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_square_capitals
knolax 6y ago
If the Japanese language needs to change, it won't be because some Western developer found it too hard to develop some obscure unused highlighting feature for it. The HN crowd's fetishistic need to change everything for the sake developer convenience really reflects poorly on programmers as a profession.

Asooka 6y ago

> should the very nature of written language change to adapt to the needs of technology This has been always the case. I mean, think of how modern latin letter forms developed. Think back to the Roman Empire, when the letters were etched in stone or wax tablets, with only capitals (before the invention of minuscule), drawn with straight lines that are easy to chisel. Think of the later periods when many books were written by scribes using pen and ink, resulting in changes to letters so they could write entire words in one hand motion. Later still, we have the printing press and its demands that each letter be a discrete unit, doing away with the wavy flow of words. Today most people write using print letters simply because the majority of writing you would encounter is in print, so that's what's easiest to read. Those changes probably don't register to you as egregious as the one parent proposes, due to the fact that the person enforcing the change and the person developing the technology are one and the same - a native speaker modifying his own language to fit the tools at hand. Which I think brings us to a resolution - the native speakers of the language are the ones to decide how to change it to suit their everyday needs, including making it easier to produce and consume with the tools of the day.

LikeAnElephant 6y ago
> Which I think brings us to a resolution - the native speakers of the language are the ones to decide how to change it to suit their everyday needs, including making it easier to produce and consume with the tools of the day. Agree with you here, it's well outside my rights as an English speaking American to have an opinion of any merit. However I would still struggle to call handing it over to native speakers a resolution. Many native speakers have incredibly strong feelings on both sides of the argument; and often for very good and valid reasons. I'm glad the Unicode Consortium exists, because I am CERTAIN I don't want to be the decider or facilitator of these discussions. Way above my pay grade.
thaumasiotes 6y ago
> Think back to the Roman Empire, when the letters were etched in stone or wax tablets, with only capitals (before the invention of minuscule), drawn with straight lines that are easy to chisel. To choose some random capital Roman letters, how about... SPQR? Those got inscribed all the time. Roman letters don't really show any bias towards straight lines. Don't confuse the fact that we split the Roman letter V into two letters U/V with the idea that they didn't carve curved letters. Check out this awesome plaque from the year 90: https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-a-bronze-inscription-a-remnant-of-roman-might/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-a-bronze-inscription-a-remn...
- earthboundkid 6y ago
  Interestingly, it’s easier for me to read that bronze plaque from the first century than a typical manuscript from the fifteenth century, in part because in the early modern period, there was a purposeful revival of the Roman inscription style for writing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_square_capitals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_square_capitals

knolax 6y ago

If the Japanese language needs to change, it won't be because some Western developer found it too hard to develop some obscure unused highlighting feature for it. The HN crowd's fetishistic need to change everything for the sake developer convenience really reflects poorly on programmers as a profession.