Western Writing

From: Richard Bourke <richard.bourke_at_bea.com>
Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 10:37:46 +0200


Alex Ferguson:(I think)
>>If it [Western] were a genuinely consistently phonetic alphabet.
>> <snip> (Western as IPA?)

Peter Larsen:
>I was asssuming Western was lettered. I keep reading that last
>staement as "Western as India Pale Ale." Do they make Pale Ale in the West?
>Are they famous for it?

That was the first acronym that leapt to my mind too. But I think it's "International Phonetic Alphabet" (the one with characters like backwards "e" describing the actual sounds, that you see in some dictionaries as a pronounciation guide.
But I don't think, if the statement about a common written language, whose readers have no clue how to pronounce the ancient Brithini language it is based on, it is accepted, Western can be any such thing. I do agree that to have spread, Western must offer concrete benefits over a written form of the native language, I just don't think those benefits are phonetic, but rather magical/logical - the same thing, in the western world view.

Richard


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