Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> Michael Everson wrote:
> > At 09:18 -0400 2005-08-31, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >
> > >But without _learning to read an alphabet_, people
> > >_cannot_ divide a syllable into anything smaller.
> >
> > I think that any Vai who wants to use a computer will have to learn
> > to read an alphabet, and pretending that this is not true is just
> > plain silly.
>
> Yet you deny you're a cultural imperialist.

Are you being deliberately childish and stubborn or is that just my
impression?

Your argument (which is also Suzanne's, and my own's) is quite clear and
correct: in order to be able to split up an open syllable [ba] into a
consonant [b] + a vowel [a], one must have been trained in an alphabetic
script, because it is only for using such a writing system that mastering
such an analysis is required. So far so good.

But also Michael's arguments is equally clear and correct: (1) due to a
bunch of historical reason (which we don't need to go into now), we can
assume that *ANY* person who is literate in Vai *AND* wishes to use a
computer *IS* also literate in some language (probably English, the official
language of Liberia) written with an alphabetic script, so she is already
capable of performing the overmentioned analysis, and (2) due to the
socio-economic situation of Liberia and of the Vai speaking community,
potential users cannot afford to have computer industry producing keyboard
hardware specifically built for Vai.

From Michael's arguments (1) and (2) *follows* that implementing a Vai
keyboard as an alternative software driver running on top of a standard
"QWERTY" (i.e. English) keyboard hardware is the optimal solution for the
needs of Vai users, and that's why he favors this approach.

In a hypothetical world where Vais where (a) a very numerous, powerful and
rich community which (b) had never in their history been colonized by
peoples using alphabets, a different approach could be preferrable to
implement a Vai keyboard. In *that* hypothetical world...

> At least by now you seem to be tacitly admitting that the "alphabet"
> might be the Arabic one.

Why not? Technically, it could also be the Cyrillic alphabet... But English
is the official language of Liberia, and US English keyboards are cheaper
that Arabic keyboards, so perhaps English is a better choice.

And, anyway, as this approach requires no hardware changes, nothing impedes
to implement variants of the input method targeted to various layouts, e.g.
US QWERTY, US Dvorak, UK QWERTY, French AZERTY, Arabic in all its national
variant layout, etc.

--
Marco