Re: Bopomofo keyboards in Taiwan

i18n@... wrote:

> Someone mentioned Michale as being a "cultural imperialist" for
> proposing and acting on his plan and not giving up in the face of the

No, for insisting that the only way to proceed is through roman-alphabet
literacy.

> opposition here. But what I wonder about is that the implications of the
> arguments of the others seems to be that the Vai are not capable of
> learning how to use new tools, or that if they are, they will only be
> able to do it once and so the first time better be perfect and optimal
> somehow.

> As for market factors, one thing that has been touched on in this
> discussion is the practicality of using existing Latin Keyboards, but
> hasn't been really delved into. That is, there is a real manufacturing
> cost, that is not trivial, to build specialized keyboards, especially in
> limited numbers.

It's a historical accident that keyboards were first devised for one of
the most symbol-poor scripts in the world, the English alphabet, with
only 26 letters (in two varieties) and no diacritics. Billions of people
in the world live in cultures whose scripts involve many more symbols
than that; the most obvious is Japan, with 50 letters (in two
varieties). A 50-letter keyboard could also accommodate most of the
Indic scripts.

> So, back to the "cultural imperialist" remark: One approach seems to
> lead towards a way to allow the Vai to get started and then participate
> in the wider world while having a collaborative opportunity at self
> determination of what kind of keyboards they will like. The other seems
> to offer a paternalistic approach of "we know best" that eventually
> leads to a dead end.

The one you advocate being the latter, of course. Would you like to
repeat the 19th-century experience of colonialism? Have you read up on
"globalization"? Hint: in the Third World it's not generally considered
a Good Thing.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...