--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, Michael Everson
<everson@...> wrote:

> You've done all you can not to read and understand
> the intent of anything I've said, or of the very nice restatement of
> that position which Marco presented.

There are two different issues here which have been confused.
First, most of us, including Marco, have agreed that segmenting
the syllable is an acquired skill not related to intelligence.

Second, some of us also agree that there are pragamatic
reasons (i.e. accessibility) why Vai who are not literate in English
will not be using a computer.

On the latter point, on the more practical level, a roman keyboard
is going to be used more in any case. (Scribner and Cole make
it clear that Arabic is a single domain literacy, therefore not
practical for computer use.)

However, Scribner and Cole also state that most Vai iterates are
not literate in English. So the *typical* Vai literate is not literate in
English. And there is a certain consensus, outside of your
personal conviction, that alphabetic literacy is a different skill
than syllabic literacy.

> You said: "The "Latin" approach to typing Vai is NOT a good (let
> alone ideal) solution -- because it would require an entire

different

> level of education to get syllabically-writing people to grasp the
> concept of segmentation."
>
> Well my goodness. For a Vai to be able to use my keyboard

layout he

> would have to *learn* something new.

I spend most of my time beside children teaching reading and
comuter skills. I can guarantee you that dealing with basic
computer navigation does *not* require being able to segment
the syllable.

These same children input on the keyboard words that they copy
from their notes shape by shape if they can't spell phonetically.
themselves. That is why shape based systems are so important.

Practically speaking your roman keyboard is a must and certainly
a necessity for any biliterate Vai, who would most likely have
learned literacy in English first. But ideally, there should be a
keyboard for a typical Vai literate developed eventually.

Suzanne