suzmccarth wrote:

>
> --- 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.)

(I thought your little table showed far more V-A biliteracy than V-E.)

> 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.

Thank you for putting it so clearly.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...