6 ms·

> Imagine you mount a letter wrong while crafting a typewriter, and it causes a country (Burma) to change that letter to accommodate your mistake. Does anyone

> Imagine you mount a letter wrong while crafting a typewriter, and it causes a country (Burma) to change that letter to accommodate your mistake. Does anyone know the details behind this?

toomuchtodo 6y ago
A few references I could find: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/11/typewriter-man/376988/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/11/typewri... http://languagehat.com/polyglot-typewriting/ http://languagehat.com/polyglot-typewriting/
- jmholla 6y ago
  Thanks! > He (Martin Tytell) spent much of his time assigned to the Army’s Morale Services Division, at 165 Broadway, which dealt in information and propaganda. There he received his hardest job of the war—a rush request to convert typewriters to twenty-one different languages of Asia and the South Pacific. Many of the languages he had never heard of before…. Morale Services found native speakers and scholars to help with the languages. Martin obtained the type and did the soldering and the keyboards. The implications of the work and its difficulty brought him to near collapse, but he completed it with only one mistake: on the Burmese typewriter he put a letter on upside down. Years later, after he had discovered his error, he told the language professor he had worked with that he would fix that letter on the professor’s Burmese typewriter. The professor said not to bother; in the intervening years, as a result of typewriters copied from Martin’s original, that upside-down letter had been accepted in Burma as proper typewriter style.
- yorwba 6y ago
  Linked from a comment in the languagehat article is the Wikipedia talk page for the "Burmese alphabet" article, which puts that claim into doubt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Burmese_alphabet#Glyph_inverted_due_to_typewriter_error%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Burmese_alphabet#Glyph_in...
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    A friend is reaching out to Ian Frazer, who authored a piece called "typewriter man" that references this claim, to obtain the provenance of it. I will return to provide an update (and update Wikipedia), if something of substance results. If I don't return before the reply window closes for this thread, check Wikipedia for those who encounter this thread in the future.
    - textfiles 6y ago
      I'm going to trust the family over Wikipedia.
      - toomuchtodo 6y ago
        I didn’t say they were lying. I thought it’d be enjoyable to keep pulling the historical thread to see where it leads and codify it in a knowledge repository of some permanence (stick the docs into an IA item, cite it in Wikipedia). Scratching my digital historian itch, doing the future a favor, that’s all. Regardless, thanks for the post, I really enjoyed a peak into Pearl and Martin’s work, and yours.
        textfiles 6y ago
        I have a reaction when we've got years (and years and years) of this and someone says "well, they're fighting about it on Wikipedia" like that means a single darn thing. Glad you like the stuff; always up for people having the specific link.
        toomuchtodo 6y ago
        I don’t blame you at all. I just wanted to make my intent clear.
nathillard 6y ago
I hadn't heard of this, but something similar has been attested with Thai: "Two of the consonants, ฃ (kho khuat) and ฅ (kho khon), are no longer used in written Thai, but still appear on many keyboards and in character sets. When the first Thai typewriter was developed by Edwin Hunter McFarland in 1892, there was simply no space for all characters, thus two had to be left out." (source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_script , pointing to https://web.archive.org/web/20101219214315/http://www.t-h-a-i-l-a-n-d.org/smithpremier/smithpremierorigin.html https://web.archive.org/web/20101219214315/http://www.t-h-a-... ) I originally heard about this in this fantastic book, which I read earlier this year: https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Typewriter-Thomas-S-Mullaney-ebook-dp-B08BT7M6LT/dp/B08BT7M6LT/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid= https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Typewriter-Thomas-S-Mullaney-... . Its focus is mostly the Chinese keyboard, and it does a great job detailing this, but there's a section about Edwin Mcfarland and his theories: https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/GuV1DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=mcfarland https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/GuV1DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gb...

> Imagine you mount a letter wrong while crafting a typewriter, and it causes a country (Burma) to change that letter to accommodate your mistake. Does anyone know the details behind this?

toomuchtodo 6y ago

A few references I could find: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/11/typewriter-man/376988/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/11/typewri... http://languagehat.com/polyglot-typewriting/ http://languagehat.com/polyglot-typewriting/

jmholla 6y ago
Thanks! > He (Martin Tytell) spent much of his time assigned to the Army’s Morale Services Division, at 165 Broadway, which dealt in information and propaganda. There he received his hardest job of the war—a rush request to convert typewriters to twenty-one different languages of Asia and the South Pacific. Many of the languages he had never heard of before…. Morale Services found native speakers and scholars to help with the languages. Martin obtained the type and did the soldering and the keyboards. The implications of the work and its difficulty brought him to near collapse, but he completed it with only one mistake: on the Burmese typewriter he put a letter on upside down. Years later, after he had discovered his error, he told the language professor he had worked with that he would fix that letter on the professor’s Burmese typewriter. The professor said not to bother; in the intervening years, as a result of typewriters copied from Martin’s original, that upside-down letter had been accepted in Burma as proper typewriter style.
yorwba 6y ago
Linked from a comment in the languagehat article is the Wikipedia talk page for the "Burmese alphabet" article, which puts that claim into doubt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Burmese_alphabet#Glyph_inverted_due_to_typewriter_error%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Burmese_alphabet#Glyph_in...
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  A friend is reaching out to Ian Frazer, who authored a piece called "typewriter man" that references this claim, to obtain the provenance of it. I will return to provide an update (and update Wikipedia), if something of substance results. If I don't return before the reply window closes for this thread, check Wikipedia for those who encounter this thread in the future.
  - textfiles 6y ago
    I'm going to trust the family over Wikipedia.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      I didn’t say they were lying. I thought it’d be enjoyable to keep pulling the historical thread to see where it leads and codify it in a knowledge repository of some permanence (stick the docs into an IA item, cite it in Wikipedia). Scratching my digital historian itch, doing the future a favor, that’s all. Regardless, thanks for the post, I really enjoyed a peak into Pearl and Martin’s work, and yours.
      - textfiles 6y ago
        I have a reaction when we've got years (and years and years) of this and someone says "well, they're fighting about it on Wikipedia" like that means a single darn thing. Glad you like the stuff; always up for people having the specific link.
        toomuchtodo 6y ago
        I don’t blame you at all. I just wanted to make my intent clear.

nathillard 6y ago

I hadn't heard of this, but something similar has been attested with Thai: "Two of the consonants, ฃ (kho khuat) and ฅ (kho khon), are no longer used in written Thai, but still appear on many keyboards and in character sets. When the first Thai typewriter was developed by Edwin Hunter McFarland in 1892, there was simply no space for all characters, thus two had to be left out." (source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_script , pointing to https://web.archive.org/web/20101219214315/http://www.t-h-a-i-l-a-n-d.org/smithpremier/smithpremierorigin.html https://web.archive.org/web/20101219214315/http://www.t-h-a-... ) I originally heard about this in this fantastic book, which I read earlier this year: https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Typewriter-Thomas-S-Mullaney-ebook-dp-B08BT7M6LT/dp/B08BT7M6LT/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid= https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Typewriter-Thomas-S-Mullaney-... . Its focus is mostly the Chinese keyboard, and it does a great job detailing this, but there's a section about Edwin Mcfarland and his theories: https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/GuV1DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=mcfarland https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/GuV1DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gb...