Re: Reduced Vai Repertoire

Michael Everson wrote:

>
> At 08:38 -0400 2005-08-23, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > > A 48-key keyboard has a key (with §/±) to the
> >> left of the 1 key and also has a key (with `/~)
> >> to the left of the z key.
> >
> >Then what do they put in Opt-6, which is §, and S-O-=, which is ±?
>
> It depends on the keyboard layout I suppose. On
> the British and US keyboards it is both § and ±,
> so there is redundancy. The Irish keyboard uses
> Opt-6 for a deadkey for circumflex, though ± is
> still on S-O-=.
>
> >And in the Opt and S-O positions of the extra key?
>
> These positions with the British key layout are
> null (they produce nothing). It depends what the
> people who develop the individual keyboard
> drivers. There are many of those.
>
> > > "89,500 in Liberia (1991 L. Vanderaa CRC).
> > > Population total all countries: 105,000. [...]
> >> Language use: 20% use English, 10% mende, 5% Gola
> >> as second language. Language Development:
> >> Literacy rate in second language 10%."
> >>
> >> What I said remains true: English is the official
> >> language of Liberia, and Vais who use computers
> >> will encounter it and the Latin alphabet. Indeed,
> >> they must already, as surely road signs are
> >> written in Latin. And computer hardware keyboards
> >> they use will be engraved with QWERTY.
> >
> >And how many of those 89,500 Vai-speakers are among the 69,000
> >English-speakers?
>
> That data is not in the Ethnologue. The road
> signs are still going to be written in Latin. All
> of the Vai speakers *I* know speak English. And
> doubtless many, many of them speak Liberian
> English, the trade language which has 1,500,000
> second-language speakers in Liberia, according to
> the Ethnologue.
>
> > > Yes, and lots of lexicographers, informed by good
> >> typography and tradition, prefer façade, naïve,
> >> résumé to facade. Do what thou wilt.
> >
> >Lexicographers do not _prefer_. They _report_.
>
> Perhaps you've never edited a dictionary. Like

Only the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (Manuscript Editor, 1976-84).

The heading includes every attested spelling; the lemma is a
normalization based on current understanding of Semitic philology.

> everyone, lexicographers make choices. When I
> edited Nicholas William's English-Cornish
> dictionary, we had to make choices. What spelling
> to use as the first spelling in the headword, for
> instance. Whether to include US spellings as well
> as UK spellings. The answers to these questions
> do not bloom out of thin air. They come, often,
> from the work of other lexicographers. We checked
> good practice of the Concise Oxford 1998
> dictionary.
>
> façade (also facade)
> résumé (also resumé)
>
> The Concise Oxford was inconsistent with the
> other word, interestingly, with two headwords:
>
> naïf
> naive (also naïve)

The Merriam-Webster 11th Collegiate, which is generally taken as the
American standard, has:

facade also façade
résumé or resume or resumé
naïf or naif
naive or naïve

role also rôle
cooperate

From the Explanatory Notes, p. 14a col. i:

"When a main entry is followed by the word _or_ and another spelling,
the two spellings are equal variants. Both are standard, and either one
may be used according to personal inclination: ocher or ochre. If two
variants joined by _or_ are out of alphabetical order, they remanin
equal variants. The one printed first is, however,slightly more common
than the second: plow or plough.

"When another spelling is joined to the main entry by the word _also_,
the spelling after _also_ is a secondary variant and occurs less
frequently than the first: cancellation also cancelation. Secondary
variants belong to standard usage and may be used according to personal
inclination. If there are two secondary variants, the second is joined
to the first by _or_. Once the word _also_ is used to signal a secondary
variant, all following variants are joined by _or_ ..."

(I don't find anything about diacritics, but usually where there's no
difference other than accented letters between two words, the one with
an accent comes second, so they seem to be saying that résumé is most
common and resumé (which is simply wrong from the French point of view)
is probably least common.)

> For more information about the English-Cornish
> dictionary, whose second edition is under
> preparation, see
> http://www.evertype.com/gram/ecd.html

--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...