6 ms·

The difference is that most countries don't expect the world to bow to them (culturally, technologically, etc). While I used Chinese products, I never had to le

The difference is that most countries don't expect the world to bow to them (culturally, technologically, etc). While I used Chinese products, I never had to learn how to spell my name with Chinese characters.

smcl 3y ago
You're saying this like it was some deliberately hostile, colonial move to impose ASCII on the world. But I don't think it was quite like that, more that in the beginnings of computing people designed and built things for themselves. And it just happened to be that a lot of that early work happened in the anglosphere.
- wink 3y ago
  I honestly think it has more to do with culture. I've never been to the US so this might be completely wrong, but my observations from talking to people and just observing: - if you move to the US and have a name made up of non-ASCII chars you are more likely to either drop them/substitute them with ascii chars, or use the Anglicized version of your name if it exists, or adopt an English name. And then it's kinda easy to legally change or your name. Or screw it, it's kinda easy to just show up and tell them you're Johnny Awesome and then you're Johnny Awesome. - if you move to Germany, you can't legally change your name at all without good reason, every document ever, no matter how informal (especially at school) will probably have your full name, maybe hopefully just "First Last" and not all 7 of them, everyone of authority will refuse to call you Johnny Awesome if your name is actually Johnathan Jean-Pierre Awesome-Livingston, and so on, oh and they will also fail to not butcher your name if it's not so easy a 4y old can learn it. We can't be the only ones leaning more towards #2. And no, I'm not making this up, my go-to example is that I've seen cases where things like officially not calling "Bill Gates" "William Gates" have met resistance. Your name is your name, and I'm still not sure how people in the spotlight are able to be called Dick, I'm not joking.
  - account42 3y ago
    Try living in an asian country - probably you will have to choose a name in the local script which at best vaguely sounds like your given name. It's expected that if you use someone elses playground that you adapt to their rules - that goes for moving to a foreign country and to using technology primarily developed in one.
jacquesm 3y ago
If modern computers had been invented in China and had had a decade or two headstart on the rest of the world then you may well have had to do just that. This was an accident of history, not some deliberate plan to get the world to bow to the English speakers. And English was already well established as a major language in trade (due to it being superficially simple to learn), next to German, French and Spanish. China was pretty isolated for a long time culturally as well as geographically and the complexity of its script is another barrier to it being accepted as a common language by the rest of the world. One of the more interesting things along this line in recent history is that with Brexit the EU no longer has an England/Wales/Scotland and a chunk of Ireland in it, but another chunk of Ireland remains. This led the French to immediately propose that French become the official language of the EU parliament but the rest of the countries wouldn't have it, and rightly so. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/brexit-france-eu-french-english-b1861087.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/brexit-franc...
- extraduder_ire 3y ago
  I think that french diplomat just saw their shot, and took it. I doubt they actually forgot that there's still two english-speaking countries in the EU.
  - bdsa 3y ago
    Ireland and... Malta?
- acqq 3y ago
  > due to it being superficially simple to learn I, however, don't think most of the people who started using one of the named languages instead of their mother tongue ever really selected English using that specific criterion.
- b3orn 3y ago
  > This led the French to immediately propose that French become the official language of the EU parliament but the rest of the countries wouldn't have it, and rightly so. Didn't happen, they just said they'll use French during their council presidency (not the parliament, it's not even mentioned in your article), that's all, there are no rules against that. They would've done it regardless of Brexit.
FooBarWidget 3y ago
China has its own problems. There are obscure family names out there consisting of characters that aren't officially recognized, so computers can't process their actual family names. So those people instead pick the closest alternative officially recognized character instead, purely for the purpose of official documents and appeasing computer systems.
- snowpid 3y ago
  As I understood family names are very old in China. So who chose the family name and "invented" a character?
  - FooBarWidget 3y ago
    I think in premodern times the Chinese character set was not as centrally regulated as it is now, and therefore there should be quite many instances of independent/local character invention.
    - dtech 3y ago
      I mean this is far from unique to China, see e.g. the disappearance of þ (Thorn) from the English alphabet.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      many chinese characters consist of combinations of other characters. most common is a combination of two, where one component suggests the meaning, while another hints at the pronunciation. here is one character made up of 11 others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biangbiang_noodles#Chinese_character_for_bi%C3%A1ng https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biangbiang_noodles#Chinese_cha... this shows that new characters can be created not by inventing new strokes, but by simply combining existing characters to convey a new meaning, much like we occasionally do create new words in english by combining existing ones, even though that process in english is not productive, unlike eg. german, where it is quite normal. the difference is that these new words only have one syllable. with the digitalization the creation of new characters essentially ends. the creation of the simplified chinese character system also pushes against creating new, more complicated characters. it is going to be interesting to see how that will affect language development. new "words" can still be created by using a sequence of characters, but that means that each character keeps their syllable sound. whereas new compound characters would have a single syllable. so if a new meaning emerges for a syllable, a new character can't be created for it. will this prevent new single-syllable words? or will it lead to multiple characters being pronounced with a single syllable?
GrygrFlzr 3y ago
Even right now in modern day Japan I have to canonize my name in katakana (syllabary designed for foreign/loan words), and all the systems strictly expect a singular word First Name and a singular word Family Name. If you have a middle name, it effectively gets thrown out. Multi-word first and/or last names need to be smooshed or cut down. I have encountered even worse issues digital forms that only accept kanji (Chinese characters) or hiragana (syllabary designed for native Japanese words), the latter of which usually does not support certain voices that katakana supports. Ashley Tisdale, for example, is normally rendered as アシュレイ・ティスデイル (ashurei tisudeiru) - ティ is actually te with a small -i modifier, which does not usually exist with hiragana. Forcibly converted to hiragana, it turns into あしゅれい・てぃでいる - but ぃ is not accepted by the form, even if it exists in UTF-8. Your options are either converting the ティ into ち (chi) or て (te), neither of which are ideal, and may cause mismatches to other systems that properly support the katakana version. The problem extends further into physical paper forms, where often they provide a very limited amount of boxes for characters, because native Japanese and Chinese names can easily fit within 8 characters. Combine this with the digital systems above and you're bound to have several versions of your name floating around on official documents all mismatching each other. Some systems that need to print onto physical cards (e.g. getting a 1/3/6 month route pass on your SUICA or PASMO contactless smart cards) are even worse and turn dakuten (diacritics for hiragana/katakana) into their own character. As an example, the character ほ (ho) can be turned into ぼ (bo) using a dakuten, or ぽ (po) using a handakuten. The system will instead render those as two separate characters: ほ゛ and ほ゜ respectively, which cuts down on the number of available characters for the already limited textbox space you're dealing with. The world is full of presumptions about names even today.
- vladvasiliu 3y ago
  > The problem extends further into physical paper forms, where often they provide a very limited amount of boxes for characters, because native Japanese and Chinese names can easily fit within 8 characters. This happens in Europe quite often, even though many people have longer names.
- CoastalCoder 3y ago
  Interesting! Any idea if this is why, in Japanese-dubbed anime, the voice actors seriously mangle some English words/names? E.g., they often add a vowel sound to the ends of English words that should end with a percussive syllable. I.e., do you think it comes from those words/names being written in katakana or hiragana in the dialog scripts, and those systems just can't express the correct pronunciation of such English words/names?
em-bee 3y ago
you haven't been in china long enough. i have had a few situations where the system was unable to write my name in latin characters. i even had to get a notarized transliteration of my name into chinese so that the resulting chinese version could be used on some official documents.
Kamq 3y ago
> expect the world to bow to them (culturally, technologically, etc). I mean, I don't expect you to bow to me. But at the same time, the software I produce at work is usually entirely consumed by americans who speak english (ok, well, there's one canadian customer that I'm aware of). Because that's who pays for it, and none of those customers is particularly looking to pay for translation. And the software I produce during my off hours is generally meant for me and my friends to consume. I'll put that on github/gitlab/source hut and you can use it if you want, but I definitely don't have the budget for translation either.
AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
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smcl 3y ago

You're saying this like it was some deliberately hostile, colonial move to impose ASCII on the world. But I don't think it was quite like that, more that in the beginnings of computing people designed and built things for themselves. And it just happened to be that a lot of that early work happened in the anglosphere.

wink 3y ago
I honestly think it has more to do with culture. I've never been to the US so this might be completely wrong, but my observations from talking to people and just observing: - if you move to the US and have a name made up of non-ASCII chars you are more likely to either drop them/substitute them with ascii chars, or use the Anglicized version of your name if it exists, or adopt an English name. And then it's kinda easy to legally change or your name. Or screw it, it's kinda easy to just show up and tell them you're Johnny Awesome and then you're Johnny Awesome. - if you move to Germany, you can't legally change your name at all without good reason, every document ever, no matter how informal (especially at school) will probably have your full name, maybe hopefully just "First Last" and not all 7 of them, everyone of authority will refuse to call you Johnny Awesome if your name is actually Johnathan Jean-Pierre Awesome-Livingston, and so on, oh and they will also fail to not butcher your name if it's not so easy a 4y old can learn it. We can't be the only ones leaning more towards #2. And no, I'm not making this up, my go-to example is that I've seen cases where things like officially not calling "Bill Gates" "William Gates" have met resistance. Your name is your name, and I'm still not sure how people in the spotlight are able to be called Dick, I'm not joking.
- account42 3y ago
  Try living in an asian country - probably you will have to choose a name in the local script which at best vaguely sounds like your given name. It's expected that if you use someone elses playground that you adapt to their rules - that goes for moving to a foreign country and to using technology primarily developed in one.

jacquesm 3y ago

If modern computers had been invented in China and had had a decade or two headstart on the rest of the world then you may well have had to do just that. This was an accident of history, not some deliberate plan to get the world to bow to the English speakers. And English was already well established as a major language in trade (due to it being superficially simple to learn), next to German, French and Spanish. China was pretty isolated for a long time culturally as well as geographically and the complexity of its script is another barrier to it being accepted as a common language by the rest of the world. One of the more interesting things along this line in recent history is that with Brexit the EU no longer has an England/Wales/Scotland and a chunk of Ireland in it, but another chunk of Ireland remains. This led the French to immediately propose that French become the official language of the EU parliament but the rest of the countries wouldn't have it, and rightly so. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/brexit-france-eu-french-english-b1861087.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/brexit-franc...

extraduder_ire 3y ago
I think that french diplomat just saw their shot, and took it. I doubt they actually forgot that there's still two english-speaking countries in the EU.
- bdsa 3y ago
  Ireland and... Malta?
acqq 3y ago
> due to it being superficially simple to learn I, however, don't think most of the people who started using one of the named languages instead of their mother tongue ever really selected English using that specific criterion.
b3orn 3y ago
> This led the French to immediately propose that French become the official language of the EU parliament but the rest of the countries wouldn't have it, and rightly so. Didn't happen, they just said they'll use French during their council presidency (not the parliament, it's not even mentioned in your article), that's all, there are no rules against that. They would've done it regardless of Brexit.

FooBarWidget 3y ago

China has its own problems. There are obscure family names out there consisting of characters that aren't officially recognized, so computers can't process their actual family names. So those people instead pick the closest alternative officially recognized character instead, purely for the purpose of official documents and appeasing computer systems.

snowpid 3y ago
As I understood family names are very old in China. So who chose the family name and "invented" a character?
- FooBarWidget 3y ago
  I think in premodern times the Chinese character set was not as centrally regulated as it is now, and therefore there should be quite many instances of independent/local character invention.
  - dtech 3y ago
    I mean this is far from unique to China, see e.g. the disappearance of þ (Thorn) from the English alphabet.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    many chinese characters consist of combinations of other characters. most common is a combination of two, where one component suggests the meaning, while another hints at the pronunciation. here is one character made up of 11 others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biangbiang_noodles#Chinese_character_for_bi%C3%A1ng https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biangbiang_noodles#Chinese_cha... this shows that new characters can be created not by inventing new strokes, but by simply combining existing characters to convey a new meaning, much like we occasionally do create new words in english by combining existing ones, even though that process in english is not productive, unlike eg. german, where it is quite normal. the difference is that these new words only have one syllable. with the digitalization the creation of new characters essentially ends. the creation of the simplified chinese character system also pushes against creating new, more complicated characters. it is going to be interesting to see how that will affect language development. new "words" can still be created by using a sequence of characters, but that means that each character keeps their syllable sound. whereas new compound characters would have a single syllable. so if a new meaning emerges for a syllable, a new character can't be created for it. will this prevent new single-syllable words? or will it lead to multiple characters being pronounced with a single syllable?

GrygrFlzr 3y ago

Even right now in modern day Japan I have to canonize my name in katakana (syllabary designed for foreign/loan words), and all the systems strictly expect a singular word First Name and a singular word Family Name. If you have a middle name, it effectively gets thrown out. Multi-word first and/or last names need to be smooshed or cut down. I have encountered even worse issues digital forms that only accept kanji (Chinese characters) or hiragana (syllabary designed for native Japanese words), the latter of which usually does not support certain voices that katakana supports. Ashley Tisdale, for example, is normally rendered as アシュレイ・ティスデイル (ashurei tisudeiru) - ティ is actually te with a small -i modifier, which does not usually exist with hiragana. Forcibly converted to hiragana, it turns into あしゅれい・てぃでいる - but ぃ is not accepted by the form, even if it exists in UTF-8. Your options are either converting the ティ into ち (chi) or て (te), neither of which are ideal, and may cause mismatches to other systems that properly support the katakana version. The problem extends further into physical paper forms, where often they provide a very limited amount of boxes for characters, because native Japanese and Chinese names can easily fit within 8 characters. Combine this with the digital systems above and you're bound to have several versions of your name floating around on official documents all mismatching each other. Some systems that need to print onto physical cards (e.g. getting a 1/3/6 month route pass on your SUICA or PASMO contactless smart cards) are even worse and turn dakuten (diacritics for hiragana/katakana) into their own character. As an example, the character ほ (ho) can be turned into ぼ (bo) using a dakuten, or ぽ (po) using a handakuten. The system will instead render those as two separate characters: ほ゛ and ほ゜ respectively, which cuts down on the number of available characters for the already limited textbox space you're dealing with. The world is full of presumptions about names even today.

vladvasiliu 3y ago
> The problem extends further into physical paper forms, where often they provide a very limited amount of boxes for characters, because native Japanese and Chinese names can easily fit within 8 characters. This happens in Europe quite often, even though many people have longer names.
CoastalCoder 3y ago
Interesting! Any idea if this is why, in Japanese-dubbed anime, the voice actors seriously mangle some English words/names? E.g., they often add a vowel sound to the ends of English words that should end with a percussive syllable. I.e., do you think it comes from those words/names being written in katakana or hiragana in the dialog scripts, and those systems just can't express the correct pronunciation of such English words/names?

em-bee 3y ago

you haven't been in china long enough. i have had a few situations where the system was unable to write my name in latin characters. i even had to get a notarized transliteration of my name into chinese so that the resulting chinese version could be used on some official documents.

Kamq 3y ago

> expect the world to bow to them (culturally, technologically, etc). I mean, I don't expect you to bow to me. But at the same time, the software I produce at work is usually entirely consumed by americans who speak english (ok, well, there's one canadian customer that I'm aware of). Because that's who pays for it, and none of those customers is particularly looking to pay for translation. And the software I produce during my off hours is generally meant for me and my friends to consume. I'll put that on github/gitlab/source hut and you can use it if you want, but I definitely don't have the budget for translation either.

AlgorithmicTime 3y ago

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