[85853] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: Klingon orthography (was: Okrand at qep'a')
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael Everson)
Wed Jun 24 03:50:34 2009
From: Michael Everson <everson@evertype.com>
In-Reply-To: <4a417f80.47c2f10a.695d.7d64@mx.google.com>
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:48:28 +0100
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
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/
