Michael Everson wrote:

> Learning the values of 26 letters isn't learning a language, but I
> mean, come ON.

Michael, what people is trying to say is that learning the values of 26
letters is *not* enough to be able to use them to spell syllables.

My pre-school son knows that "T" sounds /t/ and "A" sounds /a/, but still he
does not know how to spell /ta/. He says "I don't know what letter /ta/
looks like". Similarly when reading: he can tell that he sees a /t/ followed
by an /a/, but he can't grasp that the two letters form a sequence to be
pronounced /ta/.

> I don't think that monoglot Vai speakers will get very far with
> computers if they don't learn the Latin script.

I don't think that it

> is unfair or unreasonable to expect them to understand the advantages
> of the Latin script with regard to computers. And it isn't "cultural
> imperialism", but simple realism that is behind this view. Even if

To this, I wholeheartedly agree.

A monolingual Vai computer user is simply a fairy tale character, who can
only exist in the fantasy of people who are monolingual in one of the few
superstar languages of the world (such as English, Spanish, Chinese) and
can't figure out that the rest of the world is multilingual.

I can't imagine a Liberian who is not (nor wishing to become) alphabetized
in English who develops the eccentric idea of using a computer.

--
Marco