tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jun 24 01:37:30 2009

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Re: Klingon orthography (was: Okrand at qep'a')

Michael Roney, Jr. ([email protected])



Hawaiian has no okena. Hawai'i does. Just sayin'.
~naHQun


-Michael Roney, Jr.
Professional Klingon translator
http://twitter.com/roneyii

--Sent from my Palm PreMichael Everson wrote:

On 24 Jun 2009, at 02:20, Michael Roney, Jr. wrote:

> Google has problems searching in many languages, not just Klingon.

And character equivalence of Q and q is not just a problem (potential  
or otherwise) on Google; they are just the biggest example.

> Q vs q is the least of your worries.

It's a valid worry for Klingon though.

> Try searching for my sister-in-law, Ginea. Google will assume that  
> you can't spell and that it knows best, so they will ask you if you  
> really meant a small animal. You didn't, so you continue to the  
> results.
>
> Google continues to think that they know best, and you are given  
> results that DO NOT match your specified search paramaters.

I agree, it is annoying.

> Let's say you heard this joke about an Irish lady wanting to vote  
> for fellow Irishman, O'Bama.
> Google ignores the apostrophe.
>
> Its and it's are the same word. Hawaiian also uses ' as a full- 
> fledged consonant. Google doesn't care.

Actually Hawaiʻian uses a different coded character, MODIFIER LETTER  
TURNED COMMA, which Google also ignores. :-(

> We have the language code tlh (thank you). What good is it? Google  
> doesn't use it.

Language tags are used for various purposes. Tagging is a good thing.  
It's true that Google does not allow even in an advanced search to  
choose more than a handful of languages. Irish isn't even one of them.

> Google is full of flaws. Don't use their shortcomings to justify  
> change.

Canonical character equivalence is and will be a problem for Q and q,  
expected or unexpected, simply because of the nature of canonical  
character equivalence. My argument does not hang on Google's  
performance only.

Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/











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