--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@...> wrote:

>
> (I thought your little table showed far more V-A biliteracy than

V-E.)

It is not the numbers that disagree but the domains. That is, a lot
of people can read Arabic but they don't appear to use Arabic to
write letters as they do in Vai. Since English is the official
language, each village has to have someone lterate in English to
help with record keeping and official business.

So definitely English keyboards are the winners but I am
hypothesizing that working with the English alphabet, any
alphabet, and then working backwards from there to
standardizing or reforming orthographies in syllabaries changes
the way the syllabary functions.

It is a theoretical concern, to a certain extent, but if it devalues
traditional literacy skills and makes older literates feel they
cannot spell correctly becuse they do not use the script with the
phonemic 'accuracy' that is the new standard then, this effect
should be studied or recorded, at least observed and discussed
at any rate.

Maybe what we are seeing here is comparable to what
happened when typesetting was introduced by the Jesuits in
India. I am both interested in the most arcane and obscure
details of writing system history, hence my continued interest in
sharing this discussion with you, and I am interested in the
practical success of minority literacy initiatives.

Suzanne