LL-L: "Standardization" (was "Software localization") LOWLANDS-L, 02.AUG.2000 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 02.AUG.2000 (02) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Henry Pijffers [hpijffers at home.nl]
Subject: LL-L: "Software localization" LOWLANDS-L, 02.AUG.2000 (01) [E]

Ian hef schreven:
>
> I think to sum this up, it was once
> suggested to me that you can define a language, in Europe at least, by
> saying that it is a variety where the spellings do NOT always reflect the
> spoken form - precisely because the spellings are traditional and therefore
> reflective of a distinct literature. Where something is written down in
> such a way as to reflect exactly the way it is spoken, it is then a dialect,
> because this reflection will use the spelling system from the standardized
> version of the language.
>
I agree with Ian on that. Therefore we'd have to avoid Dutch and/or German
influence as much as possible, else we'll end up with a standard we'll
never get recognition (let alone status) for, just because the spelling system
is the same.

> For example, I believe the Scots spelling of
> "Belfast" should remain "Belfast", because Scots speakers will know how
> "Belfast" is pronounced in Scots. However, many people here insist on
> "Bilfawst". But this is defeatist, the spelling "Bilfawst" reflects how
> "Belfast" is pronounced in Ulster-Scots *to an English ear*, using
> English conventions. In fact, the unstressed 'e' in Ulster-Scots is *always*
> pronounced nearer /i/, and the stressed 'a' is always long. Scots
> speakers know this anyway!
>
I think placenames are a little bit tricky. Furthermore, you'd have to ask
yourself
whether placenames are in any way representative of a language. For example,
the city which I currently live in is called "Enschede" in Dutch (and in
German),
however we always write and pronounce it like "Eanske" in Low-Saxon. If we
were
to enforce a strict standard on place names, we'd probably have to write it as
"Eensche", which is probably received as linguistic bullshit by 99% of the
people.
I myself don't fancy it much either... On the other hand however, were I come
from,
"Rijssen" in Dutch, is written as "Riessen" by most people, where I use
"Risen",
because that used to be the name that appeared on maps, so therefore I think
that
"Riessen" is just a bad Dutchification. I think in the case of placenames,
we'd have
to check if an older form can be found (like Risen), and if so, that one
should be
used, if still applicable. If one can't be found, or is inapplicable, you
should check if
the Dutch or German name really is that weird/differing. If not, then stick to
it.

Ron hef daarop schreven:
>
> Even though I agree with Ian in that wild dialect mixing would be likely to
> lead to wild confusion, I also feel that adherance to a single dialect in
> standardization is too restrictive and is also likely to cause resentment on
> the part of speakers of other dialects.
>
> I feel that Henry's idea of an initially "soft" standard (if I understood him
> correctly) is a good one.
You got that correctly Ron :)

> I imagine that this would entail leaving speakers
> and writers options, hoping that one or the other would eventually prevail or
> that there would be tolerable coexistence for all eternity, as long as people
> can understand each other.
>
That's exactly what I'm hoping for, tolerance. Maybe just a single option will
prevail, maybe others or all will prevail, but with tolerance, or maybe we'll
just get the bonus of everybody having more options (I'd prefer the latter).

>  Is this not also the case with Nynorsk, the
> smaller but not lesser Norwegian language?  Is it not or did it not used to be
> a loose standard or set of guidelines that leaves choices between elements
> derived from various dialects and thus allows for dialectal "color" within the
> use of this loose standard?  A long time ago I spoke with two Norwegian
> writers who used Nynorsk.  One of them was a recent "convert," having
> previously written in the predominant Bokmål (Dano-Norwegian) language.  She
> complaint about the absence of strict rules which forced her to draw from her
> own dialect and also sometimes caused her writing to have Bokmål
> interference.  The other writer, who had always written in Nynorsk, argued
> that the high degree of flexibility of Nynorsk was its strength, that it
> should be enjoyed as long as people still understood each other.  The way he
> saw it was that he was writing in his home dialect that he had merely adapted
> for a more general readership.
>
Maybe we'll have to ask some Norwegians how they did it then...
I kinda envision Low-Saxon going down the same path.
Language should be a joy, not a pain in the writer's arse!
One should be able to write material, without having to constantly check
whether the spelling is still correct. I can't even spell a single sentence
correctly in Dutch (in English I can, those spelling guys did a better job...)
, but the meaning is never any different from a correctly spelled sentence.

> I agree with Ian that grammar standardization would be an important
> component.  However, this soft approach would solve, at least initially,
> dilemmas such having to decide for instance which present tense plural verbal
> suffix to use in Low Saxon: (1) -t (e.g., _wie hebbt_ 'we have', _jie leert_
> 'you study/teach', _se kaamt_ 'they come') or (2) -en (e.g., _wie hebben_ 'we
> have', _jie leren_ 'you study/teach', _se kamen_ 'they come'), distribution
> being somewhere in the vicinity of 50%-50% among the dialects.  In this
> approach you would allow both forms as a matter of choice.
>
I'm all for this as well. We could just work out both forms and kind of create
a double standard, and see which one gets the upperhand. We should keep in
mind, as Ian said, that the process should be gradual, that we shouldn't try
to
do it all in one fell swoop. It's ok that the first "version" will be one with
flaws and
some parts doubled. Even big blunders should be accepted. You can always
refine (and you will) later. It took the Dutch a few centures to arrive where
they
are now, and they still have a bad spelling system (in my opinion), so we
shouldn't have the slightest idea we could do better at once.

> I think that such a more flexible approach would also have some psychological
> benefits.  What I have gathered from discussions is that many or most Low
> Saxon speakers seem to fear that standardization would result in the death of
> their dialects and of the writing in their dialects, that some committee of
> bureaucratic-technocratic language planning dictators and engineers would come
> up with some weird, unnatural set of rules to be shoved down everyone's
> throats.  Perhaps their fears are not totally unfounded.  A more flexible
> approach that accommodates choices might at least lessen this perceived blow.
>
Exactly. People will be put off from the start, if they have the feeling that
somebody is trying to shove something down their throat, as Ron says.
Try and change their minds then! If on the other hand, you give them some
options, they'd be more susceptible to it. And once people have accepted
something, the process of gradual change and tolerance can result in a
somewhat more strict standard.

may the standard be with you,
Henry

----------

From: Edwin Michael Alexander [edsells at idirect.com]
Subject: Edwin Michael Alexander [edsells at idirect.com]

At 08:14 AM 08/02/00 -0700, Ron hef schreven:
> > > I think it's time someone steps forward and says "Like this!".

Well, now you see the great advantage of the attitude of the English
orthography.  We all agree on a spelling (generally speaking), and you may
pronounce it any way you like in your dialect.  The mindset of the Dutch
and Germans is undoubtedly a great obstruction to a common orthography for
Low Saxon, since the words MUST be spelled the way they are pronounced, and
with so many different pronunciations, the task is therefore impossible, a
priori.

The development of the Chinese system of writing, as I understand it, was
purposed to provide a common way of communicating, EVEN between much more
disparate languages.

Now, if I can read the various dialects of Low Saxon and understand them
all equally well without even knowing how they actually may sound, I would
think that the solution would be to take a certain standard, perhaps based
on being at the geographic centre or having the largest number of real
speakers, or perhaps as having certain basic texts or periodicals that are
the most widely read (e.g. a Low Saxon Bible or a widely read newspaper),
and have a convention of all other people involved in media, culture, and
education to agree that this will be the way things are spelled, regardless
of how your region pronounces it.

Of course, this will never happen, because this would be like English,
which everyone over there agrees is so hopeless and screwed up, and they'd
have to admit that, despite its difficulties, it has SOME
advantages.  Until they disassociate themselves from the notion that every
word must be written the way it is pronounced, this project, I'm afraid, is
a jousting with windmills.

Ed Alexander
JAG REALTY INC.
80 Jones Street Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8R 1Y1
Pager: 905-545-0177  Fax: 905-525-6671 Email: edsells at idirect.com
Jag Realty Inc.: http://www.deerhurst.com/jag/
Ontario Ultra Series:  http://ous.kw.net/
Burlington Runners Club: http://www.deerhurst.com/brc/

-----

From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Software localization

Dear Lowlanders,

Ed wrote:

> The mindset of the Dutch
> and Germans is undoubtedly a great obstruction to a common orthography for
> Low Saxon, since the words MUST be spelled the way they are pronounced,
> and with so many different pronunciations, the task is therefore
> impossible, a priori.

Not quite.  If the spelling is phonemically based, as any good alphabetically
based system should be and was meant to be, and if all dialects were written
in this same way, even without creating a standard language variety there
would be very, very few differences between written dialects.  The reason is
that the differences are mostly phonological, i.e., are allophonic,
"phonetic."  Thus, the phoneme sequence /öür/ may be pronounced as [öür],
[öör], [oir] or [üür], depending on the dialect.  You need only one way of
spelling this, allophonic variation being irrelevant, since phonetic
representation is not the job of a normal spelling system.

> Well, now you see the great advantage of the attitude of the English
> orthography.  We all agree on a spelling (generally speaking), and you may
> pronounce it any way you like in your dialect.

> The development of the Chinese system of writing, as I understand it, was
> purposed to provide a common way of communicating, EVEN between much more
> disparate languages.

But at what cost?!  The Chinese system, as also the strongly historically
based English, Tibetan and traditional Mongolian orthographies, require
life-long learning, i.e., the writing of each and every word must be learned
individually.  At the other end of the spectrum, for instant in Finnish,
Polish, Hungarian, or Korean without Chinese characters (all of which are
close to phonemic systems), children learn to master *the system* in the first
couple of years of schooling and can write pretty much every new word without
having to study its spelling.  After that they go on spending their studying
time and effort on other subjects.

But we have been through this several times before.  I realize that it is
difficult to accept for people who grew up with the English spelling system
(using "system" loosely) because it's what they know and feel safe with.
People who started off with other systems have a different perspective, and I
have yet to meet one of those who would agree that English orthography is
superior.  It is a realy pain to them, given that English is the international
lingua franca.

Regards,

Reinhard/Ron

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