Michael Everson wrote:

>
> At 17:55 +0000 2005-08-30, suzmccarth wrote:
>
> >Anyway it all breaks down to whether someone can use a roman
> >orthography to input a syllabic writing system without first
> >consciously learning alphabetic literacy. Porbably some can and
> >some can't. What do you think?
>
> "Some can't" is nonsense, except for dyslexics. Human beings can
> learn all sorts of things. It isn't rocket science to teach people
> that you press the

As a matter of fact, it _is_ rocket science. People who have not learned
an _alphabet_ cannot divide a syllable into anything smaller. There's at
least one study of an Indian script demonstrating this.

> The Ethiopic "standard" keyboard is "alphabetic". Deadkeys where the
> first key is a consonant followed by a vowel.
>
> So much for the unfairness of alphabetic input for syllabic scripts.

I don't know what "the Ethiopic 'standard' keyboard" may be, but the
Amharic typewriter keyboard that was made by Olympia is not "consonant
followed by vowel," for the simple reason that the 182 basic Ge`ez
shapes, not to mention the labiovelars and the extra Amharic diacritics,
could only be fitted onto a standard typewriter by making lots of
ingenious dissections of the characters.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...