16 Apr
1999
16 Apr
'99
2:47 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: Hans Franke <Hans.Franke(a)mch20.sbs.de>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 17, 1999 5:03 AM
Subject: Re: OT: City Names
> What? Have we found in the Aussies a nation who
are even worse at
foreign
> languages than the British? I never thought
I'd live to see the day!
;-)
Probably. We do have an excuse though. :^) The Brits are close enough to
France and Spain to throw rocks at 'em.
Maybe, since if he counts in large, non primary
english speaking
parts of australia just as english ?
Large, non-primary English speaking parts of Australia????
Where? The Tanami Desert?? Pidjantjara is possibly more prevalent, but
with a density of 1 person per 20 Square miles, it doesn't make a lot of
difference.
In major cities the only things that spring to mind are places like
Cabramatta which is predominantly Vietnamese.
(The experiance of driving
some hunderts of kilometers thru the outback and then getting
'Schwarzbraun ist die Haselnuss' as the first song on the first
radiostation is like beeing hit by a 1000 ton hammer)
I believe that. Where did you come out? The Barossa Valley?
> Watch out! The Serbian alphabet is as different
from the Russian
alphabet (the
> de facto standard for Cyrillic) as the Polish
alphabet is from the
English
> alphabet...
Good Grief.
AFAIK only 5 additional letters (DJE, JE, LJE, TSCHE
and DSCHE)
but you're right.
> (I have somewhere a Yugoslavian banknote. Everything is written on it
in
four
> local languages - two using Cyrillic and two
using Latin characters.
The
> languages are similar enough that AFAIK nothing
needs to be said more
than three
> times...)
Only 3. Right. And I thought the Canadians had problems. :^)
3 Language 4 scripts:
Slovenian (Latin)
Serbocroatian (Latin)
Serbocroatian (Kyrillic)
Macedonian (Cyrillic)
Ouch.
(*) This is a kind of a once a lifetime job ... or
when do you get
a chance to develop a new characterset system :)) The task is to
enhance an 20 year old (still new releases and development) EBCDIC
mainframesystem to support not only some umlauts, but rather all
main European languages _and_ some foreign scripts like Cyrillic,
Greek or Arabic - I havn't had so much fun since a long time
How long does it seem likely this will take? 60 years? Or only til you
retire? ;^)
EBCDIC is in good company it seems. Best of luck..
Cheers
Geoff Roberts