tlug: IPA (evolving from the topic: Japanese input)

[Cliff Miller <cliff@example.com>]

Hi,

I was just talking with Koji, here, and he had a great idea that
should solve all the kana-kanji problems once and for all:

  IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet)

It seems a little cryptic at first, but once you get used to it, boy
is it sweet. For those that don't know about it, IPA is basically a
linguistically reasonable (and relatively neutral) way to represent the
sounds of human languages.

Now take this idea to its logical conclusion: have *everybody* use
it. Not just people in Japan and China, but people in Paris, Moscow,
LA, Tehran, Dehli and Moab.

We don't just get rid of kana and kanji, but in one fell swoop we can
free ourselves from the messiness of hangul, cyrillic, devanagari,
and all those other odd scripts that I can't even spell. (Ah, but with 
IPA, I could spell anything!) Even people in Western Europe would have 
a lot to gain.

There would be no end to the benefits English speakers would enjoy by
having their illogical spelling system cleaned up once and for
all. Oh, and think about the silly French with all those letters they
waste when they don't even pronounce half the letters. This would go a
long way toward saving the rain forests, I imagine.

No more having to explain to our kids why there's a "g" in light,
and a "k" in knee, or why "i" comes before "e" in some cases but not
others. True, we would loose those great mnemonic and other clever
things that our grade school teachers taught us(like "piece" is just
"pie" and then you "c"ut it and "e"at it), but for the greater good we
would make the sacrifice. Oh, and speech-to-text and text-to-speech
systems would be a sinch. Gee, I've already come up 5 new products to
develop for next year, just writing this paragraph. 

We could conduct studies to see which sounds are the most common
universally and to specific languages, and create virtual keyboards
according to statistical analysis that would make most efficient use
of the faster fingers. We would probably need new "hard" keyboards
too, to make use of all the beauties of the IPA system. In the US, a
portion of the profits experienced by keyboard manufacturers
pumping out the new keyboards could be funnelled into social programs
that would help train people to use the IPA.  

In Japan, a whole new industry would spring up with IPA jukus and
private schools to teach everyone how to use the new system. Taxes on
these businesses could be funnelled into projects that would be used to
convert the books from the Primitive Pre IPA Era. Wow, this would go
far towards solving unemployment and economic recession, too!

And in the US, we could stamp out regional prejudice by chosing a certain
dialect and basing American English on that. I would strongly suggest
Texan English, because Texans tend to have a relaxed attitude, and use
fewer vowels, which would lead to greater efficiency and conservation
of tongue and mouth muscles. Plus Southern English just sounds cool. And
sexy if spoken by the right person. We could get everyone to speak
with a Texan drawl, just by having them read the San Antonio Tribune
every morning.

These are just some thoughts, but hey, who knows, efficiency is not
always so bad.

Cliff

=============
$B%/%j%U!&%_%i!<(B
$BBeI=<hDyLr<RD9(B
$B%Q%7%U%#%C%/%O%$%F%C%/3t<02q<R(B
Cliff Miller
Pacific HiTech, Home of TurboLinux
Tel +81-3-5477-9675
Fax +81-3-5477-9919
cliff@example.com


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