in reply to Re^3: Save yourself, start all projets with UTF-8 encoding
in thread Save yourself, start all projets with UTF-8 encoding

Neither English nor Latin *need* any character outside of ASCII. Your examples in English are examples of pretty typography, not of the language itself. "Jalapeño" and "résumé" are still correct if written as "jalapeno" and "resume" - in the latter case it is disambiguated from "resume" by context - or by writing "CV" instead. See also "cafe", which lacks the accent that it would have in French. "π" is, of course, not English, but Greek.

Latin inscriptions don't use accent marks, and I'm not aware of them existing in Latin handwriting either (such as in the Vindolanda tablets). I would, of course, be delighted to be corrected in this, with examples from before the fall of the Empire. I presume that the ones you cite are there to indicate pronunciation to a reader unfamiliar with Latin. I've seen similar marks in text books for teaching English as a foreign language.

  • Comment on Re^4: Save yourself, start all projets with UTF-8 encoding

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Re^5: Save yourself, start all projets with UTF-8 encoding
by jdporter (Paladin) on Apr 11, 2011 at 14:32 UTC
    Neither English nor Latin *need* any character outside of ASCII.
    ...
    "π" is, of course, not English, but Greek.

    It's true that English does not need such special characters. By that line of reasoning, we may as well say that English doesn't need any characters at all, because it is a spoken language. Now, if you will object and say that English is also a written language, then you must allow that English as a written language needs whatever characters are appropriate for expressing the author's intent. A reasonable definition of English as a written language is: whatever an author (an ideal author, let's say) who speaks no languages other than English is able to write. For example, a mathematical text in English contains symbols necessary for expressing math. Can you imagine telling a novelist, or a physicist, that she can only write using ASCII characters from now on? Sure, you could force such a restriction on people, but it's crippling and arbitrary.

    "Jalapeño" [is] still correct if written as "jalapeno"

    Um, actually it isn't. It's still comprehensible, through the miracle of the human mind's ability to do pattern-matching; but it is really an example of shoe-horning the proper form of a written language into an arbitrary subset of characters. "ñ" and "n" are different (though similar) letters. But I'm glad to see you use this example, because it's illustrative of the English language's inclusive and subsuming nature.

    How do you pronounce "aa"? Perhaps it would help to know that the proper written form is "ʻaʻā". Yes, it's English. And jamming it into ASCII is a really bad idea.

    I reckon we are the only monastery ever to have a dungeon stuffed with 16,000 zombies.
[reply]

      I hope you'll forgive me, but I'm not willing to take your word for it about "jalapeno" being incorrect. I've emailed the editors of the OED, so if they reply I'll summarise here. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that English loan-words from other languages often lose their accents. The obvious example being "cafe". The only point of dispute here is one of degree - my assertion that they can *all* lose *all* their accents.

      I'm not sure what your point is supposed to be regarding mathematics, unless it was just stupid pedantry.

[reply]
        I hope you'll forgive me, but I'm not willing to take your word for it about "jalapeno" being incorrect. I've emailed the editors of the OED, so if they reply I'll summarise here.
        You needn’t have bothered. The OED entry for jalapeño is quite clear about this:

        jalapeño, n.

        Pronunciation: /hæləˈpiːnəʊ/ /-ˈpeɪn(j)əʊ/ /xalaˈpeɲo/
        Forms: Also (erron.) jalapena. Pl. jalapeños.
        Etymology: Mexican Spanish (chile) jalapeño Jalapa chilli: see ᴊᴀʟᴀᴘ n.
        orig. and chiefly U.S.

        Also jalapeño pepper. A very hot green chilli pepper, used esp. in Mexican-style cooking.

        CITATION:

        jalapeño, n.
        Additions series, 1993; online version March 2011. <http://www.oed.com/Entry/243609>
        accessed 12 April 2011.

        Go ahead: look it up and see for yourself. It is quite simply erroneous to write jalapeño in English without the tilde, as the OED makes clear.

        Then once you’ve tired yourself out on that one, you can look up words like Allerød, señor, animé, Boötes, café crème, fiancé, fiancée, caraña, goût, hijrī, façade, fête, fräulein, garçon, gâteau, ingénue, långbanite, Madrileño, mañana, mêlée, Möbius, Mohorovičić discontinuity, Muʿallaqāt, naïveté, Nescafé, nováčekite, omertà, pâté, pièce montée, piña colada, piñata, plaçage, Provençal, chèvre, curaçao, Einfühlung, Niçoise, Qualitätswein, Québecois, quinceañera, Rōjū, rubāʿī, sertão, smørrebrød, Štokavian, téléférique, tête-à-tête, torchère, tortilla española, Tuatha Dé Danann, Übermenschlichkeit, Únětician, vargueño, vicuña, Vinča, vis-à-vis, vṛddhi, Zuñi, and chef d'œuvre, all also in the OED, and all only in the spellings as I have given them here. While you’re there, you might also take note that they admit no valid spelling of résumé shorn of its diacritics.

        Don’t go running to the OED for help in writing English poorly: they actually know how to spell. 😈

        Back to Perl content: good luck with things like smørrebrød, since U+00F8 LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH STROKE has no decomposition that will get you to o’s without the slashes; you need to go all the way to a full Unicode Collation comparison at the primary strength only before it counts as the same letter.

[reply]
        I'm not sure what your point is supposed to be regarding mathematics, unless it was just stupid pedantry.

        Close! It was one of smart pedantry.

        I think part of the essence of this debate is the lack of any precise definition of "necessary". At the very least, there's

        1. the minimum necessary to enable communication.
        2. that necessary to comply with the full proper written form of the language.
        As long as one takes one definition and the other takes the other, there will be no agreement.

        I reckon we are the only monastery ever to have a dungeon stuffed with 16,000 zombies.
[reply]

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