Re: Layer 2 and "idn identities" (was: Re: [idn] what arethe IDN identifiers?)

[John C Klensin <klensin@jck.com>]

--On Tuesday, 04 December, 2001 16:56 +0800 Maynard Kang
<maynard@pobox.org.sg> wrote:

> I find the notion of comparing TC/SC equivalence to Japanese
> Kanji/Hiragana/Katakana equivalence rather compelling and
> far-stretched to an extent.
> 
> Having gone through an institutionalized form of
> Chinese-language education exclusively in SC with hardly any
> opportunity (or neccessity) to learn TC, I must say that if not
> for the availability of TC/SC conversion programs (e.g.
> NJStar), it would be a mammoth task for me to communicate with
> my Taiwanese friends over e-mail, since my knowledge of TC
> characters is almost as sparse as my knowledge of Arabic (i.e.
> practically non-existent).

Maynard,

There are two separate issues here, and I think part of the
problem is that they keep getting confused.

One is whether you should be able to communicate with your
Taiwanese friends and whether automatic translation
(character-mapping, if you prefer) techniques should be available
to help you.  The answer to that question is certainly "yes", and
I don't think anyone on this list would disagree with that.  If
you had Arabic-using friends, and you spoke Arabic, but didn't
read and write it, the answer would be the same: it would be
wonderful to have automatic translation/ mapping/ writing
systems, they should work well, and you should be able to use
them.

But what we are told in the west is that the original beauty of
Chinese is that a single writing system unifies several different
languages and spoken forms.  If the Chinese you speak is
"Mandarin", then you wouldn't necessarily expect to communicate
in spoken form with a Cantonese-only speaker, either: only the
writing system unifies the two language forms.

For better or worse, the decisions to "simplify" the language
sacrifices some of the universality of the writing system in the
interest of making it easier to teach and write.  Worthwhile, I
presume, but a tradeoff.  In the general case, hard to have it
both ways but, again, I don't think you would find anyone who
would argue that, if computer means can be made to help with the
mappings, people should be prevented from doing so.

The second question is whether that set of mappings/ conversions/
translations ought to be incorporated into IDN or the DNS.   And
it is _there_ that we differ.  Once again, the DNS incorporates
strings of individual characters, not names.  The further we get
away from doing bit-string-level matching, the more trouble we
get ourselves into, and TC-SC mappings are pretty far from
bit-string matching.

The logic "I should be able to communicate with my Taiwanese
friends, even though we don't use the same characters to write
the same words" doesn't work, at least in this DNS context, any
more than "I should be able to communicate with my
Arabic-speaking friends, even though I can't read their language"
does.   If I said that about Arabic, I would be justly criticized
for expecting the DNS to compensate for my ignorance.

> Compare this with Japanese; I do not think you can find two
> Japanese-speaking individuals, one having knowledge of "egg" in
> Kanji ONLY and one having knowledge of "egg" in Hiragana ONLY.
> 
> Chances are most Japanese-speakers know both equivalent forms.
> Chinese-speakers may not.

At least in some styles of teaching Japanese outside of Japan,
Hiragana is taught first. So finding someone who cannot recognize
a given Kanji character, even when the Hirigana for the work is
known or can be guessed merely requires finding someone young
enough or new enough to the language.
 
regards,
    john